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The Boys’ Big Game Series 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 











I 


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Byron saw the red gleam of an eye and fired—Chapter XXVI 








Printed in the United States of America 



C opyright , 
6 y 

The Reilly & 


1923 

Lee Co. 


All Rights Reserved 



The Saber-Tusk Walrus 



AUG -3 1923 


©C1A752365 




CONTENTS 


Chapter Page 

I A Mad Thrust . 9 

II The Long Trail. .... 25 


III “ We Co Down Here . 38 

IV “ This Is Where I Am Hiding .. 46 

V Face to Face with Old Saber-Tusk 54 

VI Major Clinton's Secret. 62 

VII Shadows of Coming Adventures... 68 

VIII The Major Puts Two and Two To¬ 
gether.... 77 

IX Old Jaggers and His Gold. 84 

X A Tragic Battle. 93 

XI A Trip to the Moon. 107 

XII Trailing a Man. 116 

XIH The Earth Appears to Swallow 

Someone..., ( .,. 126 

XIV The Challenge.... 135 

XV “ Now I Have You ”. 142 

XVT Hiding in the Shadows.. 150 

XVII Perplexing Friendships ..... 159 
















Contents 


Chapter Page 

XVIII Bad News for Saber-Tusk. 166 

XIX A Surprise ... 173 

XX The Death Threat. 182 

XXI A Hurdle-Race in the Night.... 191 

XXII Strategy. 200 

XXIII Ben Arnold's Story. 208 

XXIV The Hunt Is On. 216 

XXV The Beginning of a Strange and 

Mysterious Combat. 255 

XXVI He Drives the Harpoon Home. 232 

XXVII A Bull's-Eye __ 244 











The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


CHAPTER I 

A MAD THRUST 

To say that Byron Snowder was surprised 
at the thing he saw would have expressed it 
mildly. To say that he was perfectly astounded 
at what he himself did would he to express his 
feelings not at all. 

For some time he had been wending his way 
in and out among the jagged ice piles that 
line the shore of Behring Strait on the Alaskan 
side. It had been ghostly enough, this wan¬ 
dering, lighted only by the mellow glow of the 
moon and the white twinkle of the stars, the 
frozen surface of the sea taking on the ap¬ 
pearance of a vast graveyard; each upended 
cake seeming a marble tombstone. 

“ Enough tombstones for every poor sailor 
who lost his life at sea since life began,” he 

9 


10 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

had told himself. Just at that moment he had 
heard, or thought he had heard, a shuffling 
sound behind him. He had turned quickly but 
had seen no living thing. 

“ I must have imagined it,” he told himself. 
“ Spooky out here; have to get down to busi¬ 
ness. Ought to be a pool about here some¬ 
where. 9 9 

He was hunting, yet he carried no rifle. In 
one hand he balanced a single shaft some six 
feet in length. This wooden shaft, the size of 
a shovel handle, was tipped at the upper end 
with some sixteen inches of ivory, and at the 
other with eight inches of heavy bone, into 
which was set a slender shaft of ivory six 
inches long. This ivory-shaft was tipped by 
a bit of bone into which was set a point of 
steel with edge as keen as a razor. 

This was an Eskimo harpoon. Eskimo hunt¬ 
ers use it for catching seal and walrus. The 
point of bone and steel is loose from the shaft, 
but is fastened to some forty feet of stout 
rawhide rope. 

When one has driven this point into the 


The Saher-Tusk Walrus 


11 


hide of his prey, the shaft drops off. The 
rawhide rope is held by the sportsman. As 
long as he does not lose hold of the rope, the 
seal or walrns is at his mercy. 

Byron, who had but recently learned to wield 
this strange hunting implement, had come out 
in search of a little brown seal. A steak or 
two from it would not be unwelcome in camp. 
The heart and liver would be excellent. The 
remainder would be fed to the dogs. 

“ Strange how a fellow gets into such a place 
as this,” he told himself. “ Strange that I 
should be way up here on the top of the world, 
seventy-five miles from the Arctic Circle.” 

Just as he said that, his eye caught sight of 
a dark patch of water straight ahead. “ Just 
the place,” he breathed. “ There ought to be 
a whole colony of seals living there.” 

Then, just as he turned to walk toward it, 
he caught again that shuffle. Quickly following 
the shuffle came a mysterious sound, a loud 
hiss like the hiss of a goose. 

Wheeling suddenly about, he all but fell back¬ 
ward; his eyes bulged; his knees trembled. A 


12 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

ghostlike apparition had appeared just behind 
him. 

Not five yards from him, slowly rising upon 
his haunches, was the largest animal he had 
ever seen outside of a circus. 

“ A hear! ” his lips framed the word, “ a 
mammoth polar bear.” 

As the creature rose, he appeared to climb 
out upon the very sky, so tall he was. His 
mouth was open in a broad grin. Two half cir¬ 
cles of ivory teeth gleamed in the moonlight. 
His forepaws swaying in air seemed the broken 
boughs of some giant tree. 

This was the thing that had surprised him. 
But his own action surprised him fully as much, 
for without one single second of consideration 
of consequences, but quite as if by instinct, he 
poised the harpoon in mid-air, then hurled it 
right at the very center of the bear’s ample 
breast. 

The instant the shaft had sped, he realized 
the fatal blunder, realized it as fully as he 
might had he had a month to meditate upon it. 
The harpoon could do nothing more than in- 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


13 


flict a painful and irritating wound. Left to 

himself, the hear might have dropped upon 

all fours and ambled awav. But now — 

%> 

The expression of hurt surprise that flashed 
over the bear’s face as he suddenly doubled 
into a heap, was all but human. 

He fell upon the shaft. It snapped like a 
pipestem. This action must have embedded the 
point more firmly between the bear’s ribs for, 
with a roar of fury, he rose and went scram¬ 
bling away. 

Open-mouthed, the boy stood and watched 
him go. He was glad the bear w T as gone; the 
line attached to the point would be lost, but he 
was getting off easy at that. He was — 

Suddenly, to his great consternation, he felt 
himself lurch forward. He had been jerked, not 
struck. He was thrown flat upon his stomach. 
With the breath knocked from him, with senses 
reeling, he was dragged forward over the rough 
ice at a terrific rate. His confused senses told 
him what had happened. When he had started 
hunting, he had tied the loose end of the walrus- 
hide rope of his harpoon about his waist. Jerry 


14 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

Maxwell, his pal, had remonstrated, had told 
him it was not safe, hut he had said that since 
he was not to hunt walrus but only the harm¬ 
less, seventy-five pound seal, it was safe enough 
and he was sure not to lose the seal. 

“ And now the bear has me,” he moaned. 
“ He’ll drag me to some dark pool of water, 
plunge beneath its surface and drag me after 
him. That will be the end of me.” Byron felt 
helpless and forlorn. 

At that instant, he remembered the pool of 
water he had been approaching when the bear 
found him. He wondered if the bear was go¬ 
ing in that direction. In his confusion he could 
not tell. 

Mad]y his mind struggled with the problem 
before him. How was he to escape? The raw- 
hide rope was strong, strong enough to hold a 
two-ton walrus. To hope that it might break 
was useless. Vain, too, was the hope that he 
might loosen the rope. As he shot forward he 
heard the rope sing like a bass viol string. The 
knot was behind him; he could feel it press into 
the muscles of his back. The rope had slipped 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 15 

forward. He was being dragged by the shoul¬ 
ders. 

Two things were favorable: He was dressed 
in tough native-tanned skin garments and there 
had been a recent storm which had heaped snow 
against every jagged bit of ice. The skin gar¬ 
ment protected him from cuts; the snow 
smoothed his path. 

The whole thing would have been amusing 
had it not promised to end so tragically. 4 4 Like 
being towed by an elephant,’’ he thought. “ Bet 
that bear weighs a ton. Pity he hasn’t a real 
load to haul.” 

This thought suggested the possibility of 
somehow hitching that rope to some two-ton ice 
cake. The thought was instantly abandoned. 
How was one to get an opportunity to hitch it 
to anything? He was not being given time 
enough so much as to scramble to his feet. 

There came a second’s pause in his wild ride 
after the great white bear. Byron’s heart 
stopped beating, then plunged on as hope 
loomed. He saw what had happened. The bear, 
having crossed over a great pile of ice frag- 


16 The Boys’ Big Gcvnie Series 

merits, had descended on the other side. The 
rope had caught in a crevice and had stuck. 

Byron, half upon his feet, was feeling back¬ 
ward for the knot in the rope when, with a 
jerk that threw him flat and knocked the wind 
quite out of him, the bear tore the rope free. 

The next instant the bov felt himself drawn 

* 

up over the ice pile with the speed of a dry 
willow leaf blown upward by an Arctic gale. 

Sudden as was his rise, his descent was even 
more sudden. So much faster was his drop than 
the speed of the bear that more than three feet 
of slack was gained. 

“ If only he’d go over a high enough hill,” 
he told himself, “I’d get enough slack to set 
me free.” 

Then a terrible thought came to him. As he 
reached the crest of the ice pile, he saw dark 
spots in the distance; three of them; dark pools 
of water. Far away they might be, but not so 
far but that the bear might cover the distance in 
a short time. Once a, pool was reached, instant 
death by drowning seemed inevitable. 

And he must not drown. Suddenlv he re- 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


17 


called the fact that, locked in his own mind, was 
a secret, a great discovery he had made that 
morning. Major Clinton, head of their hunting 
party, must he told. Until that secret was 
shared by someone who could be trusted, he could 
not, must not, die. 

One little gleam of hope came to him. Be¬ 
side one of those pools he had seen a dark 
speck. The pools were far away and he had 
not, in that flash of time, been able to make out 
the nature of that speck. Was it a brown seal 
asleep on the ice, or was it a hunter? A 
hunter might bring him hope. Jerry, his pal, 
was somewhere hunting on this very stretch of 
ice. But his heart sank; Jerry carried only a 
harpoon, such a one as he had so foolishly sent 
crashing into the bear’s breast. A poor weapon 
in such an emergency, yet Jerry would do his 
best. 

His hope was short and ended in awesome 
fashion, for the bear, having arrived at the 
edge of a dark pool, plunged, without a pause, 
into its stinging depths. 

The rope was thirty feet long. In a few 


18 ‘ The Boys’ Big Game Series 

seconds Byron would be in the water. In less 
than a minute he supposed he would be dead. 
With a little gasp he seized the rope with both 
hands, in a mad effort to arrest the movement 
of the bear. The result was somewhat sur¬ 
prising. The bear was now swimming, not 
running. He paused, wheeled half about and 
looked back as much as to say: “ Now why 
did you do that? ” 

Not knowing the power of a creature swim¬ 
ming in the water, the boy for the space of a 
few seconds was led to hope that he might be 
able to hold the bear in one position while he 
drew up the rope, gained some slack, slid the 
knot round to the front of him, untied it and 
fled. 

This hope was short-lived. After one good 
look at the boy, the bear resumed his journey. 
His speed was not as great as upon the ice, 
but there was power enough there to move an 
object ten times the size of the boy. 

For six seconds Bvron’s mind was filled with 
wonderings regarding death by drowning. In 
those six seconds he died six separate deaths. 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


19 


He froze, he strangled, was suffocated, and 
who knows what other deaths he died. And 
still he lived. 

That he should die, he doubted not in the 
least. True, the bear had not disappeared be¬ 
neath the surface of the pool. He was swim¬ 
ming straight for the center of it. But sooner 
or later he would dive. That might be at the 
center or at the far edge. 

All of a sudden Byron felt himself slide off 
the edge of the ice. The next instant he plunged 
into the stinging water. Even here he gathered 
a little hope. He was a strong swimmer. Might 
he not outswim the bear and gain enough slack 
to effect his escape? 

Again hope died. It appeared that as an 
athlete the bear had him beat ten ways. With 
his Australian crawl at its best, Byron could 
not gain an inch. 

Without a second backward look the bear 
swam straight on. Struggling only to keep his 
head above water, the boy expected every 
moment to be his last. Passing the center of 
the pool, the bear swam for the far side. 


20 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

Straight on he paddled. Now he had covered 
half the remaining distance, now two-thirds, 
now all but a few yards. The critical moment 
had arrived. Hoping against hope, Byron told 
himself that the bear would climb upon the ice 
beyond, that he would be dragged back to a 
safe position on the ice, and that he might yet 
escape. 

The next instant hope utterly forsook him, 
for the bear, with a grace that was maddening, 
tossed his head high to execute a semicircle 
with his body and disappeared beneath the 
surface. 

Game to the last, the boy struggled madly 
to free himself, until it became evident that 
unless he followed the example of the bear and 
dived, his brains would be dashed out against 
the solid wall of ice that lay before him. Then 
he took one long, deep breath and shot down¬ 
ward. 

That there was now a gleam of hope he did 
not dream, yet practice and instinct compelled 
him to hold his breath as long as it was humanly 
possible. 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


21 


He felt the water rushing by him. There was 
a swift current beneath the ice. They were 
going with it. That the ice above him was of 
uneven thickness he knew from the lights and 
shadows that flitted past him. 

His lungs began to pain him. There was 
a cramp in his chest. Like a copper kettle be¬ 
ing hammered, his head rang. In another second 
his mouth would come open or he would fall into 
unconsciousness. Then all would be over. Tor¬ 
tured as he was, he now longed that the end might 
come quickly. 

But what was this? Even as he was taking a 
last leave of the bright world of sunshine and 
flowers, of happy thrills and wild adventures, a 
dark spot appeared above and before him. A 
dark spot meant open water. There was yet 
hope. With a determination that set him writh¬ 
ing in the water, he held on until with three 
master strokes he brought himself to the surface 
of this second pool. With a loud “ Oof,” he 
released the air that was bursting his head, 
then, dropping flat on the Surface of the water, 
he allowed himself to be dragged forward like 


22 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

a log. The truth was, he was too near dead to 
offer further resistance. 

What had happened came to him vaguely now. 
The bear, preferring swimming to climbing, had 
swum beneath the ice from one pool to the 
other. What would he do next? 

The answer was not far to seek. This second 
pool was narrow. On reaching its farther shore 
Bruin climbed dripping from the sea. After 
shaking himself three times, he proceeded to 
climb over a great pile of broken ice. 

Byron had been dragged all but against the 
ice that lined the pool; the bear had completely 
disappeared when the draw upon the rope sud¬ 
denly ended. Summoning every available ounce 
of his remaining strength, the boy dragged him¬ 
self from the water to the ice. There, too weak 
to do more, he lay still, while his water-soaked 
garments froze into boards. 

As strength came oozing back, he dragged 
himself to a sitting position. A feeble struggle 
brought the rope round to a position where the 
knot was on his chest. Had this happened fifteen 
minutes before he would have felt himself saved, 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


23 


but now with his fingers wet and benumbed, with 
the knot frozen to the hardness of stone, he was 
powerless to effect his own rescue. In his last 
extremity he thought of the dark object on the 
edge of the pool, the one he had seen when he 
was far away. Hope revived a little; help 
might come. And in the meantime, why had the 
bear paused? He was too thankful for this 
pause to wonder much. To be dragged forward 
as he was now would be torture indeed. 

But the bear did not move; or if he did, he 
moved toward Byron and not away from him. 
At once the thought came to him that he might 
yet be attacked and eaten by the bear. 

Suddenly he leaped to his feet to thrash his 
arms and jump madly about in an effort to 
soften his frozen garments. 

“ I’ll give him a race for it,” he told him¬ 
self through chattering teeth. 

All of a sudden, he stood still. A rifle shot 
crashed out. There came another, and yet an¬ 
other. 

“ A hunter! ” he cried, 
yet.” 


44 There’s a chance 


24 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

But at that instant he felt a sudden tug at 
the rope. His heart sank as he went crashing 
upon the ice. That one terrific tug, however, was 
all he felt for some seconds. When there came 
another it was of a different sort. There was 
not the force to it. It was more as if someone 
was trying the rope out to see if it was fas¬ 
tened. 

“ Someone may have wounded the bear,” he 
told himself hopefully. “ Perhaps he is trying 
to drag himself away.” 

At that instant he saw a small brown head 
poked up above the ice pile over which the bear 
had clambered. The head was followed by a 
pair of narrow shoulders that belonged to a very 
small brown man who carried a prodigious rifle. 

The small man’s eyes followed the rawhide 
rope until it ended around Byron’s chest. 

“ Oh! ” he said disappointedly, “ was that 
your bear? ” 


CHAPTER II 


THE LONG TRAIL 

Long as the time had seemed to Byron as he 
had been dragged by a giant of a polar hear 
at the end of the rawhide rope, and rough as 
the ice trail had been, it was a much longer 
trail that had brought him to the White North. 
The trail had begun in this wise: 

They had been seated by a fire in Bear 
Canyon Inn, of the Cascade Mountains in the 
state of Washington, he and his pal, Jerry 
Maxwell — Jerry had been asleep in his chair — 
when a stranger had entered. This stranger 
carried a leather hag from which protruded 
some mysterious looking shafts. At first Byron 
thought them a bow and arrow. 

“ Can you bend a how as heavy as that? ” 
he had asked impulsively. 

The stranger did not answer at once, hut 
stood alternately blinking at the light and star- 

25 


26 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

ing at Byron, as if to draw the answer to the 
question from his own eyes. 

This had given Byron an opportunity to study 
the man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, middle- 
aged. His hair was jet black; so, too, were his 
eyes. These eyes were the striking part of him. 
They gleamed from beneath his bushy eyebrows 
like jewels of black jade. “ If a person’s got 
a really keen mind,” one of Byron’s teachers 
had once said to him, “ he can’t hide the fact. 
You’ll see it in his eyes.” 

Byron had gone this far in his study of the 
stranger when the man spoke. 

“ Why, no,” he smiled, “ I can’t bend it; 
but why should I want to? ” 

Byron opened his eyes wide. Evidently he 
had made some mistake. The thing he had 
thought was a bow and arrow was perhaps some¬ 
thing else. 

“ Why, I—” he stammered, scarcely know¬ 
ing what to say. 

“ Perhaps you thought it was a bow and 
arrow,” smiled the stranger as the light of a 
new idea flashed across his mind. “ Of course 


\ 


i 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 27 

you might. Hadn’t thought of that before. 
That’s not what it is, however.” 

Stooping down, he unlaced a thong that held 
the bag tight about the shafts and, the next 
instant, held before the astonished boy two 
instruments which were beyond doubt some form 
of native hunting equipment, but from what land 
Byron could not tell. 

“ Harpoons,” said the man simply, “ Eskimo 
harpoons. This small one is more or less out 
of date. It was used in taking seals as they 
slept on the ice. The Eskimos shoot them now. 
But the large one, the one with a shaft that no 
man could bend, is of the type that is used 
quite as much now as it was a hundred or two 
hundred years ago. The natives hunt walrus 
with them in the open sea, in skin-boats, ten 
or twelve miles from land. Exciting sport, I 
can tell vou. 

“ You see,” he said as he slid easily into a 
chair by the boy’s side, “ if you shoot a walrus 
in the water, you’re almost sure to lose him. 
He’s hard to kill; takes several shots some¬ 
times to do him in. Then after he is killed, 


28 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

like as not lie sinks and you never see him 
again. Not only that, but he seldom travels 
alone. Perhaps there are a thousand of his 
tribe within a half mile of you. You have a 
four-ton boat and can carry home the de¬ 
sirable parts of three or four of the big beasts. 
But the moment you shoot, the whole herd dis¬ 
appears and the one you get is the only one 
you carry away, providing you get him. 

“ If you harpoon them, however, you can 
run your skin-boat right in amongst them. 
They’ll come up under your boat, go leaping 
about in the water near your boat and have a 
barking, bellowing, regular walrus picnic with¬ 
out being at all disturbed by your presence. 
You can even harpoon three or four of them 
and lash them to your boat and still they pay 
no attention to you. When you’ve harpooned as 
many as you can carry home, you begin to shoot, 
but not till then. 

“ This harpoon was made by an Eskimo. 
Some clever work on it. Want to look at it? ” 

“ Be mighty pleased to,” Byron had said as 
he took the shaft in his hand. 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


29 


It was a remarkable piece of handicraft, that 
walrus harpoon, Byron was not slow to see. 
Always a handicraft fan, he had himself done 
some notable work in leather and bronze, as well 
as in wood and iron. To niake a shaft such as 
the one he held in his hand required an expert 
knowledge of the working of ivory, rawhide 
leather, bone and steel. The evidence that the 
simplest kind of tools had been used in fashion¬ 
ing it was not far to seek, yet the rawhide thongs 
that bound the perfectly curved upper tip of 
walrus ivory was of even width and thickness. 
The hard whalebone which formed the socket 
for the setting of the steel-set point of bone was 
cut into a perfect cylinder. The wood shaft 
was round and smooth and was even decorated 
here and there with protruding buttons of ivory 
carved into the shape of seals’ heads. 

“ Did an Eskimo do it? ” he asked at last. 

“ Every bit,” the man nodded. “ That’s not 
all; they were doing it quite as well long years 
before the white man discovered Alaska. You 
see,” he smiled, “ we white folks think we are 
very wonderful folks; and we are, in our way; 


30 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

but other people are wonderful in their way, too, 
and that is the part we too often forget. ” 

Jerry Maxwell had awakened from his nap and 
had straightened up to listen. “ "What do you 
get with that? ” he asked, not having heard the 
first of the conversation.” 

“ Walrus.” 

“ And did you say you had hunted them in a 
skin-boat ten miles from land,” Byron asked 
with growing admiration. 

“ More than once.” 

“ How big is a walrus! ” asked Jerry. 

“ Sometimes two tons; big as two or three 
fair-sized horses; tusks about two and a half 
feet long; not very dangerous though, not as 
much as vou’d think.” 

44 Never dangerous! ” 

“ Almost never.” 

u Ever see ’em dangerous! ” 

“ Only once; natives called him Old Saber- 
Tusk.” 

“ But you got him! ” persisted Jerry, eager 
for a story. 

“ We did not, and as far as I know, no one 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


31 


else ever has. I happen to know that his herd 
went south into Behring Strait last autumn 
without a single member of it being taken by 
the natives, or by anyone else. In fact, the 
natives are afraid of Saber-Tusk; they think he’s 
a haunt, a spirit of some dead walrus who has 
not slept quietly in his grave and has come 
back to get revenge for some lance-thrust in his 
side or a bullet in his heart. Superstitious lot, 
those Eskimos; got considerable Christianity on 
the outside, but at heart they are still the same 
old worshipers of dead spirits of whales, wal¬ 
ruses and polar bears.” 

Both Byron and Jerry had leaned eagerly 
forward in the pleasant expectation of hearing 
a real hunting story from one who had acted 
a part in it. 

‘ c And you didn’t get him? ” sighed Jerry. 
“ How — how’d he get away? ” 

“ That,” the stranger had smiled, “ is rather 
a long story. I must turn in now. You see, 
I’ve been up at the Sunset Club giving a talk 
on ‘ Life in an Eskimo Village,’ and since it 
was rather a long one, I am naturally tired. 


i 


32 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

“ I expect to be here three days. To-morrow 
night I ’ll meet you right here in this very spot. ’ ’ 

“ Oh, Glory, that will be darby! ” Jerry had 
exclaimed. 

“ It might interest you to know,” smiled the 
stranger, as he rose to go, “ that next month 
I am starting back over the old Yukon Trail and 
that I will then be headed for Behring Strait, 
which is the home of Old Saber-Tusk. Since I 
shall be there in the spring when he is sure to 
pass north into the Arctic Ocean, just as all 
walrus do, I hope to get another crack at him 
and to be more lucky than last time all right. 
See you to-morrow night.” 

That “ to-morrow night ” proved a wonderful 
one for the two boys. Major Clinton might be 
at his best when on the lecture platform, but he 
never had a better audience than when, before 
the open fire of the hotel lobby, he told his tale 
of the far North to the two seventeen-vear-old 
lads. The love of adventure shone in the eyes 
of Byron Snowder and Jerry Maxwell as they 
leaned forward to catch every word of the story. 

But it wasn’t one story; the major had been 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


33 


everywhere and had had many adventures. 
None, however, held the boys so enthralled as 
when the scene w r as laid in the shifting drifts 
of Arctic snows or out on the drifting ice of 
Behring Strait. 

“ If I dared to I’d tell you the story of 
Old Saber-Tusk,” chuckled the major as he got 
up to stretch his legs — and give the boys a hint 
that he was growing tired. 

“ Dared to? ” queried Byron perplexedly. 

“ If I told you about him you’d never be 
satisfied till you went along with me on my 
next try for him.” 

Of course that meant another story, and such 
a tale as it was, a regular thriller, part Eskimo 
legend and part the major’s own experience. It 
all centered about a gigantic walrus, Old Saber- 
Tusk, “ Azeezrukca (the terrible one),” as the 
natives called him. 

Old Saber-Tusk was reputed by some to be 
as large as a whale, as ferocious as a barren- 
ground grizzly bear and as tough as a driftwood 
tree. As for his tusks, they were like the im¬ 
mense ones found now and then and known to 


34 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

have belonged to that extinct monster, the 
mastodon. There were some, indeed, who went 
so far as to say that this was no walrus at all, 
but one of those long-list monsters who were 
known to have existed in the days when Eskimo 
folk-stories had their beginning. 

Of course, few white men believed these wild 
tales; but then again, white men seldom hunt 
walrus and only one of them had seen Old 
Saber-Tusk, and that was Major Clinton. 

The boys would willingly have listened till 
daylight, for they kept hoping that the major 
would tell of his own adventure with Old Saber- 
Tusk, but the story-teller finally yawned so em¬ 
phatically that the boys made haste to bid him 
good-night, not, however, without his promise 
to “ see them again.’’ 

The two pals were a long time in getting to 
sleep that night, for the stirring exploits of 
Old Saber-Tusk had made a profound impres¬ 
sion on their adventure-loving souls. The last 
thing Byron said as his heavy eyes refused to 
stay open another instant, was: 

“Pm going along with the major when he 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


35 


goes back up there to get old Azeez — whatever 
his name was. If dad won’t let me go I’ll never 
forgive him — and I won’t let up till he gives 
in.” 

Jerry’s only reply was a long grunt, but next 
morning he insisted he had distinctly said, “ Me 
too, old scout,” 

The consent of their parents was not so 
easily obtained. It would be a long and danger¬ 
ous journey, and costly as well. But each boy 
had a small hoard of money he had earned in 
one way and another, and this he was willing to 
spend on the trip. Since their fathers had been 
adventurers when they were younger, and real¬ 
ized to the full the value of travel as a means 
of education, the affair was at last agreed upon, 
providing school matters might be arranged and 
the major’s consent obtained. 

Educational matters were easily disposed of. 
The school which these boys attended was of a 
new and modern sort. In it no student was 
held back for another who was slower. Each 
pupil might progress in his subject as fast as 
the keenness of his mind and his diligence would 


36 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

permit. Byron and Jerry stood well with their 
comrades in the matter of many sports, but 
above all else they were thorough students. 
They found, on consulting their records, that 
they were several months ahead of the average 
of their class. So, since their standing would 
not suffer, they easily obtained permission of 
their instructors for the desired absence. 

The arrangements with Major Clinton were 
most easily made. He welcomed them as com¬ 
panions and agreed to use all his great fund of 
information and his years of experience to make 
their journey a safe and easy one. 

At Valdez, before they struck out over the 
long trail, he had aided them in selecting the 
team of seven dogs which was to carry them 
and their equipment to the far north cape. 

He had selected for them, too, the boots, 
mackinaws, mittens and caps they should wear, 
the skin bags they should sleep in at night and 
the few camp tools and dishes they would need. 

So they had started out over the trail, which, 
winding on and on, now passed through dark, 
overhanging forests, now down the glistening 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 37 

surface of frozen rivers and now across broad 
stretches of barren tundra. 

They had slept on hard board beds in road¬ 
houses, had fought blizzards, had frozen their 
noses and their toes, had experienced a touch of 
snow-blindness, but ever and ever, on and on, 
they had pressed their way northward. 

Here they had sped through straggling vil¬ 
lages, here passed the night in an Indian’s tepee, 
and there arrived at a prosperous little mining 
city. Here they had lost the trail, then turned 
about to find it again, until at last, brown and 
ruddy with many days in the open, with mus¬ 
cles like hickory bows and lungs that expanded 
like a blacksmith’s bellows, they had come in 
sight of a great, haystack-like mountain of snow. 

“ That,” the major had said, brushing the 
frost from his eyelashes, “ that is Cape Prince 
of Wales Mountain. We are near our journey’s 
end and very close, I hope, to one or two great 
adventures. ’ ’ 


CHAPTER III 


u WE GO DOWN HERE ” 

The little brown man’s question did not seem 
to require any answer, but Byron felt he must 
say something, so he replied, trying to keep 
the chatter out of his voice, “ It was my bear 
— or I was his boy — I don’t know which.” 

“ I shot him. I am sorry,” said the Eskimo 
simply. 

“ You needn’t be,” grinned Byron. “I’m 
mighty glad to get nid of him.” 

“ You are a brave man. You had courage 
to harpoon him. I should not have had. I — ” 

All this time the small man had been climb¬ 
ing off the ice pile. Now an exclamation escaped 
his lips: 

“ You have been in the water. You will 
freeze. You are freezing now.” 

At that he rushed upon Byron and began 

38 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 39 

tearing away at his garments as if they were on 
fire. 

When he had stripped off every thread, he 
began chafing the boy’s arms and legs. The 
next moment he had stripped off his own long 
fur parka and handed it to the boy. 

“ Put it on,” he commanded. “ Not too big, 
but will do.” 

He next drew off his skin-boots, and with his 
feet protected only by deerskin socks, offered 
them to his newly found friend. 

Byron’s remonstrances were useless. Soon, 
strangely but sufficiently clad, he found himself 
being guided over the irregular surface of the 
ice by the Eskimo. 

“ Bear all right,” smiled the brown man. 
“ Ice not move here. Get him to-morrow 
maybe. ’ ’ 

In his excitement and confusion Byron had 
lost all sense of direction. Where he was being 
led to now he did not know; he only knew that 
it was necessary to get to some shelter quickly. 
He had been told by the major that he might 
put implicit trust in an Eskimo’s ability to get 


40 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

out of a tight place, provided he was in his own 
territory, so, though he had as yet seen little 
of these strange people, he was willing to trust 
this guide. 

They threaded their way in and out among the 
ice cakes and shattered piles, then came out at 
last upon a broad level stretch of ice that was 
doubtless next to the shore. 

Dimly in the distance he thought he caught 
the bulky outline of a mountain, and he tried to 
get his hearings. 

“ That,” he decided, “ should he the Cape 
Mountain, but how did it get over there to the 
left of us? ” 

He had traveled forward for another hundred 
yards when he came to the conclusion that, since 
he had wandered far in search of seal, since 
the hear had dragged him a considerable dis¬ 
tance, and since he and his strange little brown 
companion had been hurrying steadily forward 
for a full half-hour, they might be almost any 
place. 

“ But,” he told himself in some surprise, 
“ there is no Eskimo village south of the moun- 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 41 

tain, and we are south of it. Where can he 
be taking me? ” 

For the first time he began to doubt the wis¬ 
dom of following the Eskimo. u But then,” he 
reasoned, “ what could the fellow hope to gain 
by treachery? I have nothing he could by any 
chance want. He may want to keep the bear 
which he thinks I had a hand in capturing, but 
I have already told him he might have it.” 

He smiled as he thought of the bear. The 
Eskimo thought he had been attempting to cap¬ 
ture the bear, w r hen in reality the bear had 
all but brought his life to an end. Even as he 
thought of it now, he realized that he was sore 
in every joint and muscle from the bumping he 
had got. 

“ And he thinks I was brave, the Eskimo 
does,” he laughed to himself. “ Oh, well, let 
him think that. It may serve a good purpose 
some day.” 

Had he but known it, this belief of the Eskimo 
was indeed to serve him a good turn, and that 
not so many days hence. 

That they had now reached the shore, he 


42 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

realized as he tripped over a driftwood log 
and barely escaped being thrown upon his face. 

Soon they were crossing over a series of 
low mounds, which he took to be sand dunes. To 
his surprise, on mounting one of these, he saw a 
pale yellow square of light spread flat over the 
very peak of the mound. This square, some two 
feet across, looked exactly like a great patch of 
fox fire. That it could not be fox fire, he knew 
well enough. Fox fire on the snow in this climate 
was clearly impossible; but just what it was he 
did not for the moment know. 

He was wondering about this, when he was 
suddenly seized by the arm and dragged back¬ 
ward. It was the Eskimo who had stopped him. 
Now, as he glanced down at his feet, he found 
that he had barely missed walking right into a 
dark hole that yawned just before him. 

“ Wha — what is it! ” he stammered. 

“ We go down there,” the Eskimo said 
simply. “ I go first; you follow. You sit down 
and put out your feet so.” He sat down at 
the edge of the hole. “ You put down your 
feet and drop so.” He disappeared from sight, 


The Saber-TusJc Walrus 


43 


all but bis bead. “ Then you sit down again 
and put out your feet and drop again. Then 
you are part way there, but not all tbe way. 
Do as I do. Follow me.” His bead disappeared. 
He was gone. 

Byron’s knees trembled as be sat down upon 
tbe snow. It w T as spooky business, tbis follow¬ 
ing a native you bad never seen, across tbe 
moonlit ice, to drop at last into a dark bole in 
tbe earth which might bide who knew what un¬ 
known terrors. 

“ But here goes,” he whispered grimly. “ One 
cannot freeze, and that’s what I’ll be doing if 
I don’t get in somewhere. I believe my toes are 
already frozen. They feel dead as marbles.” 

At that be allowed himself to slip over tbe 
brink. He felt a strange sensation thrill him 
through as be shot downward, then landed with 
a thump, and all in a heap, on what appeared 
to be a wooden platform. 

“ That fine,” encouraged his guide. “ Now 
do it again.” 

Attempting to peer into the darkness, Byron 
saw not a solitary ray of light before him. 


44 


The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

u Regular robbers’ den,” be told himself, 
“ but again, here goes.” 

Once more he landed in a heap. This time, 
however, the floor beneath him seemed more sub¬ 
stantial. It was as if it were laid upon the 
solid earth. 

“ This way. Stoop. Follow me,” whispered 
his companion. 

Byron did stoop, but not enough, for he 
bumped his head on an overhanging beam, and a 
smothered groan escaped him. 

“ Lower! lower!” whispered his guide. 

All but crawling upon hands and knees, the 
boy moved forward. His shoulders brushed first 
this wall, then that one. His head now bumped 
the wall above him. 

“ Passage to a dungeon,” he told himself, 
“ couldn’t well be any narrower.” 

“ Lower! lower! ” came in the same whisper. 
“ On your knees.” 

Scarcely had the boy obeyed when a patch of 
light with a semicircular top, which reminded 
him of the entrance to a dog kennel, appeared 
before him. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


45 


This was immediately blocked by the body 
of the Eskimo. 

“ That,” Byron told himself with a shudder, 
‘‘ is the entrance to this little wild man’s den.” 

For an instant he held back, hut the pale 
yellow light suggested warmth, and since, above 
all else at that moment, he wanted to he warm, 
he prepared to crawl through the hole. 


CHAPTER IV 


“ THIS IS WHERE I AJM HIDING ” 

The place Byron found himself in was a single 
room. Not more than twelve feet square but 
with a ceiling fully seven feet in height, it was 
to all appearances an underground den of some 
sort. The walls were of driftwood. Very solid 
logs, some of them massive, had gone into its 
construction. Whether the house had first been 
built and then earth and sod heaped about it, or 
whether a hole had been dug for the house, the 
boy could not guess. 

A pale yellow light pervaded the place. This 
came from two rows of flickering flames, one to 
the right, and one to the left of him. As he 
glanced toward the ceiling, he guessed what had 
caused the square of yellow light in the snow 
above. There was a sort of skylight exactly in 
the center of the roof. The light from the flick- 

46 


The Sober-Tusk Walrus 


47 


ering flames fell upon the tissue-paper-like cov¬ 
ering of this window and made it glow. 

The place was unbelievably warm, especially 
when one thought of the cold outside. Yet why 
should it not be? No air could enter save 
through the passage by which they had come, 
and none could leave but by the small square 
above. 

All this Byron took in in a single moment. The 
next moment he became conscious of the fact 
that he and the Eskimo boy were not alone. The 
boy was speaking, and that not in the English 
tongue. As Bvron ? s eyes became more accus¬ 
tomed to the light, he made out the form of a 
small Eskimo woman. Seated cross-legged on a 
board shelf, she was as motionless as a bronze 
statue. Her big brown eyes w^ere staring at him. 

As the words of the Eskimo boy died away, 
the girl unwound her feet, leaped from the 
wooden shelf, and seating herself at Byron’s 
feet, began very quickly and very skillfully to 
remove his boots. If he was astonished by her 
action, he was not less astonished at the next 
words of the Eskimo boy. 


48 


The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

“ This,” he said very quietly, u is the place 
I am hiding.” 

“ Hiding? ” Byron’s lips framed the word 
hut did not say it. “ Hiding from what, and 
from whom, and why? ” he wished to ask, but 
checked himself just in time. “ When one’s life 
has just been saved by a fellow human being,” 
he told himself, “ he does not turn about and at 
once begin prying into his secrets. One is not 
responsible for information which he does not 
possess. One who asks few questions knows 
little, but is also obliged to tell little.” 

Having cleared his mind of these thoughts, he 
turned his attention once more to the girl. She 
was rather a pretty girl, as natives go, he 
thought, with a round face, olive-brown skin, 
great dark eyes and any quantity of jet black 
hair. 

“ Mebby froze a little,” explained the Eskimo 
boy, as he saw Byron watching the girl, who, 
having removed his boots, was gently chafing 
his feet, every now and again allowing the 
warmth of her palms to sink deep into their 
chilled surface. 



The Saber-Tush Walrus 


49 


The feet prickled and pained, but Byron did 
not flinch. When the girl had worked over him 
for some fifteen minutes, she turned her face 
toward her companion and spoke to him in 
Eskimo. 

“ She say,” smiled the Eskimo, addressing 
Byron, “ she say that one your feet not so bad. 
Mebby sore two, three days, but that all.” 

“ Thanks,” saia Byron. There was a ring of 
true gratitude in his tone as he added, “ If it 
hadn’t been for you they would have been frozen 
stiff long before this, and all the rest of me 
as well.” 

“ Mebby,” smiled the Eskimo. Turning to 
the girl he said a single syllable, “ Si! ” 

“ Eh-eh,” trilled the girl. 

From a hook above one of the rows of yellow 
flames, which came from a seal-oil lamp, she 
took down a large copper teakettle of very 
ancient and interesting design. 

After producing three porcelain cups that had 
half the enamel cracked off them, she poured a 
light brown fluid from the kettle. 

“ Cup tea? ” said the host. 


50 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

Nothing could have been more welcome. It 
was very weak and not overly hot, but it was 
tea, and it warmed him. Ere long he found him¬ 
self stretched out on a deerskin rug before one 
of the seal-oil lamps, and gathering in quite as 
much of a sensation of warmth and comfort as 
if it had been a crackling wood fire. Byron felt 
very grateful. 

Here was comfort and a chance to sleep. After 
his harrowing experience he found himself stiff 
and sore and very drowsy as well, yet dared he 
sleep? He put away all thoughts of danger to 
himself. If these people meant him harm, why 
should they have saved his life and treated him 
so well? 

Then he thought of his friends, the major and 
Jerry. They had a right to know that he was 
safe. They might at this moment be wandering 
over the desolate stretches of ice in search of 
him. 

“ But could I find my way to the shack in 
the night? ” he asked himself. “ Would this 
fellow take me there if he knew the way, or 
would he not dare? As a fugitive from some- 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 51 

one for something, what are his limitations of 
travel? ” 

Thinking of his watch, he drew it from his 
pocket and held it to his ear. It was still tick¬ 
ing. The water had not stopped it. Having 
consulted it, he found the time to be two hours 
before daybreak. 

“ ITL wait until it’s light,’’ he told himself 
as he settled back on the furs. 

“ That bear now,” said his host moving un¬ 
easily, “ whose bear is that? ” 

“ Yours, of course,” Byron smiled. 

“ But you were very brave. You harpooned 
it, and you had not a rifle. You shall have the 
skin. The meat I will eat, me and my coonie 
here.” He put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. 

Byron was about to throw back his head and 
laugh at the thought of his own bravery, when, 
as before, he checked himself, to say a moment 
later: 

“ No, no; that won’t do. I want the skin. I 
w r ill prize it very much, but I must pay you for 
it.” Searching in his trousers which hung thaw¬ 
ing by the lamp, he managed to locate a small 


52 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

coin purse and to extract from it a yellow coin, 
a double eagle. “ How about that? ” he sug¬ 
gested. 

“ I say — I say fine,” exclaimed the Eskimo. 
“ All right, here it is. You know what it’s 
worth ? ” 

“ I know. I work on American whaler two 
years.” 

“ All right; you bring me the skin when it 
is dry.” 

“ Where? ” asked the boy, a startled look 
coming into his face. 

“ Tin City. Our cabin is there.” 

\ 

“ Oh,” the boy seemed greatly relieved, 
“ mebby I do. Mebby you come after that. 
Mebby better you do that way, think mine.” 

“ Either way.” 

“ All right. Here I hide,” the boy explained. 
“ They think I go north. Me, I go south. 
Nowadluk, she come too. Come in blizzard. 
Can’t see, can’t hardly go. Freeze mebby. 
Mebby never get here. Get here though. Blow 
three days. Can’t see tracks, nobody — you 
see? ” 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


53 


Byron nodded. He was more puzzled than 
ever, yet, as before, he asked no questions. 

“ What a wonderful place to hide, ,, he told 
himself. “ Up from the beach away from the 
main traveled trail, hidden beneath the earth, 
with the snow so hard-packed by the wild beat 
of Arctic winds that soft skin-boots leave no 
tracks, it could not be found by Sherlock Holmes 
himself.” 

Suddenlv there came to his mind another theme 
•/ 

and with it a question which he might feel free 
to ask. Turning to his host he said: 

“ Have you seen Old Saber-Tusk, the Azee- 
zrukca? ” 

“ Eh-eh, yes, I have,” said the boy quietly. 
“ One time I saw him.” 


CHAPTER V 


FACE TO FACE WITH OLD SABER-TUSK 

Feeling sure that there was not a person in 
the North who had laid eyes upon Old Saber- 
Tnsk but had a thrilling story to tell, yet not 
caring to ask further questions, Byron sat with 
one ear wide open while he stared first at the 
yellow flames, then at the ancient teakettle. 

“ You wan’a know? You wan’a hear about 
that one, the Azeezrukca? ” the Eskimo asked. 

Byron nodded. 

“ All right, I tell you.’ 7 

The host sat staring into a corner for a full 
minute before he began. 

“ It very dark,” he murmured at last, “ dark 
on the water and on the land; night and not any 
moon. We are in oomiak, you know, big skin- 
boat; ten Eskimo in boat. We go hunt walrus, 
old bull walrus. You know first come through 

54 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


55 


the straits great herd of walrus, mothers, calves 
and young bulls. After that, mebby six, eight 
days, come big hull walrus. Not many, hut very 
big, these ones. Plenty meat, these ones, mebby 
four thousan’ pounds. Plenty ivory, mebby 
twenty pounds. 

“ Old woman say, i no go hunting,’ say that 
old woman. Witch-doctors say i no go hunting,’ 
say that one. Say Azeezrukca, Old Saber-Tusk, 
come, say that one. 

“ Hunter say, wan’a go. Not much meat. 
Wan’a go, that young man. Go hunting, that 
young man. Me, I go too. 

“ Hunt all day. No walrus come. Getting 
dark, then hear bull walrus talk, plenty talk, 
‘ Ouk-ouk-ouk-ark-ark-ark. ’ 

“ Afraid, two men, wan’a go home. Not afraid 
mine; wan’a hunt. 

“ We hunting. Pretty soon see big walrus; 
plenty big black walrus, plenty long white tusks, 
plenty ivory. No harpoon this one; just shoot; 
five men shoot. Bang-bang-hang-hang-hang. Just 
like that. 

“ Pretty soon see walrus on water muckie 


56 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

(dead). Then all Eskimo men glad. Plenty 
meat, plenty ivory, that one. 

“ See cakes ice, plenty fog, plenty get dark, 
wan’a drag that one walrus on ice, cut him 
up; wan’a save meat, blubber, skin, ivory; wan’a 
save all. 

“ Put rope on that one walrus, drag him to 
ice; wan’a drag him on ice. Plenty hard work 
that; ‘ Now! Who-hoop-who-hoop! Who-hoop! 7 
Shout like that, Eskimo men. Plenty hard work. 
Pull mebby five minute, head come up on ice; 
pull ten minute, shoulders on ice. 

“ Wan’a get walrus on ice ; quick come ’nother 
walrus like this one walrus. Such big tusks, 
such long whiskers, so black, so ugly, so fierce 
eyes, so loud ‘ Ouk-ouk! ’ 

“ Wan’a run, everybody. Wan’a shout, 
< Azeezrukca! Azeezrukca! ’ Wan’a let-um go 
that one walrus we have kill. Wan’a run ’cross 
ice. Say, ‘ Azeezrukca ! Old Saber-Tusk not 
walrus; spirit walrus! Run! Run! ’ 

“ All run, that Eskimo. Me, I not run mine. 
Me, I think my little brother hungry; my sister 
hungry. Not wan’a lose that one dead walrus, 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 57 

mine. Pretty much scared, mine; not run, 
mine. 

“ See big walrus, mine. Put rope round cake 
of ice, me. Dead walrus slip in water but no 
sink. Hold rope tight to ice, mine.” 

“ See live walrus, see Old Saber-Tusk, mine. 
Say, mine, very fast, ‘ Not spirit walrus; just 
big walrus, that alb Not spirit walrus! Not 
spirit walrus. Just big walrus, that all.* Say 
that, mine.” 

The Eskimo boy’s eyes as he stared at the 
yellow flames had become large and round; his 
body had grown tense as a fiddle string; every 
muscle in his subtle fingers twitched with ex¬ 
citement. 

Then suddenly he threw himself on the rug 
and lay there motionless, panting like a spent 
runner. When he once more rose to sit cross- 
legged on a deerskin, he spoke more quietly. 

“ Eskimo men like this. Some Eskimo like 
old-time Eskimo say dead whales got spirit, 
dead walrus got spirit. Afraid of spirits, this 
ones. Say Old Saber-Tusk him spirit walrus. 

“ Not say that, mine. Me, I sail two year on 


58 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

whaler. Live like white man, mine, think like 
white man. White man say no have spirit that 
one dead walrus. Think that, mine. 

“ Me, I hang on rope, not let that dead walrus 
sink.” Again his fingers trembled with excite¬ 
ment, his eyes bulged. 

“ Eskimo on ice, far off, shout: 6 Run! Run! ’ 
“ Me, I no run. 

“ That one Old Saber-Tusk he go ‘ Ouk-ouk! ’ 
He jump right out o ’ water. Such tusks — like 
white man’s arm. Such a big blackness his body. 
Wan’a run, mine. Not run either, hold rope 
fast, mine. 

“ Wan’a climb on rope, that one Saber-Tusk. 
Jump high, catch tusks on ice. Hang there. 
Tusks rattle. Br-r-r! like that. Wan’a come 
up. W'an’a come after me, that one Saber-Tusk. 
Can’t come. Ice too high. One time; two time; 
three time try that, that one Saber-Tusk. All 
time fall back. 

“ Me, I am afraid. Me, my teeth rattle, 
< Br-r-r-r,’ just like that. But me, I no run. I 
say Saber-Tusk one walrus, one great big walrus, 
bigger than ever saw before. No spirit walrus, 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


59 


that one. Spirit walrus walk on water, walk 
on air. Spirit walrus wan’a climb on that ice can 
do it quick. 

“ Pretty soon see our one big skin-boat, that 
Saber-Tusk. Jump right out of water, that one. 
Go ‘Auk-auk! ’ that one. Make one big jump 
that one. Hook tusk on boat, that one. Then, 
‘ Br-r-r-r! ’ Rip, slash, tear that skin-boat. 
Smash him bad. 

“ Mebby can’t go back home, think mine. 
Mebby drift all over ocean, starve, think mine. 
Let rope go, mine. Take aim, shoot, mine. 
Shoot that Saber-Tusk, mine, shoot three times. 

“ All Eskimos shout, i Run! Run! Run! For 
God sake run! ’ 

“ Not run, mine. Look in water, mine. 

Azeezrukca gone. Blood in water, that all.” 

Again the boy sank down upon the deerskin 
and lapsed into silence. 

Time passed; the yellow flames died down. 
One went out, then another and another. The 
Eskimo girl’s steady breathing told that she was 
asleep. A new, strange light came stealing over 
the place. It entered through the square above. 


60 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

i 

Day was breaking, another bright, bleak day of 
the Arctic. 

“ And yon — you killed the Azeezrukca, Old 
Saber-Tusk? ” Byron whispered at last. 

“ No, not kill,” the boy shook his head; 
“ just hurt a little, that all. Saw him another 
Eskimo mebby ten day after that. 

“ But that one skin-boat,” he breathed, “ one 
rib of that boat, big like harpoon handle, not 
break, not at all; cut that one rib, cut like 
with axe.” 

“ Saber-Tusk did it? ” 

“ Eh-eh.” 

“ And that’s why they call him Saber-Tusk? ” 

The Eskimo nodded. 

“ Say same Eskimo,” he resumed, “ that one 
Saber-Tusk sharpen tusks like knife on sand rock 
by shore, say that same Eskimo. Not believe 
that, mine.” 

“ But what makes his tusks like an axe then? ” 

“ Can’t tell, mine.” The boy shook his head. 
Then, rising as if to indicate that the story was 
ended, he went to a corner for a can of seal- 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


61 


oil. With this he replenished the lamps. The 
two rows of yellow flames were soon glowing 
brightly again, and outside morning began to 
glow as well. 


CHAPTER VI 


MAJOR CLINTON ’s SECRET 

Suddenly, as Byron rose to stretch his lame 
muscles, he remembered the man he had seen in 
the cabin at the foot of Hog Tooth Mountain. 
He was surprised that it had escaped his atten¬ 
tion for so long a time. In the hour of his 
gravest danger, when it had seemed that he 
would not live to tell anyone anything, he had 
thought that the bearing of this news to Major 
Clinton was of utmost importance. And indeed 
it was important. Now that he had remembered 
it, he was eager to be away. 

“ I — think I should be going,’’ he hesitated, 
looking at his host. 

“ All right, but you have not clothes,” smiled 
the Eskiitio. “ Oh, well, you may have my deer¬ 
skin parka. I have another of squirrel skin. 
Your trousers are dry enough, and your socks. 

62 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 63 

I have large skin-boots; one pair, you wear 
them. You bring them back soon mebby.” 

“ To-morrow night.’’ 

“ Eh-eh.” 

“ But I don’t know the way to our cabin,” 
said Byron suddenly. 

“ Not so hard,” smiled the boy. “ You 
come out when you ready and I show you. ’ ’ 

Having drawn on the borrowed garments, 
Byron stood for a moment by the opening which 
served as a door, before dropping on his knees 
and crawling through. 

“ You have no dogs? ” he said at last. 

“ Oh, no. That would not do.” 

“ How will you bring the bear meat? ” 

Bending far forward, the boy took two steps 
as if drawing a heavy load. 

“ You will pull it? ” 

“ Part way; carry the rest.” 

“ But we have two dog teams. We could help 
you.” 

“ No — no! ” the boy cried in alarm. 44 That 
would not do. Many dogs teams pass on beach. 
They smell track of ’nother team crossing their 


64 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

path — ‘ Bow-wow, ’ up they come to my door 
and they find me. No, no, I do it — I strong.’’ 

Byron was soon out of this strange abode and 
making the best of his journey homeward. A 
very few words of direction had set him on his 
way, and he was sure he had not been mis¬ 
directed, for did not Cape Prince of Wales 
Mountain loom directly before him, and did not 
Tin City nestle at the foot of it? 

“ Tin City.” He smiled as he said the words. 
Tin City was a city only in name. It had never 
been a city ; no, not even a town. Three cabins 
stood there side by side, and of the three only 
theirs was occupied. The miner who had named 
the place had been a man of vision. He had 
seen in his mind’s-eye, built against the moun¬ 
tain-side, and spreading out over the tundra, a 
prosperous mining city. And why not? Tin 
ore had been discovered on the mountain and 
placer tin had been dug from the beds of 
streams. Tin was as much sought after as silver 
and gold. All that was needed, apparently, was 
someone to sink shafts, to discover the rich vein, 
then to develop it. 


The Saber-Tusk Walt 'US 


65 


A shaft had been sunk. Just how deep down 
it was, no one at present appeared to know, 
except, perhaps, one person, and that person 
Byron was inclined to think was in the cabin, 
not at the foot of their mountain, but at the 
foot of Dog Tooth Mountain. 

Major Clinton’s real reason for coming north 
had not been that he might hunt Old Saber-Tusk. 
He had had a far better reason than that, though 
that was reason enough, since this terrible crea¬ 
ture had thrown such a fright into the Eskimos 
that they scarcely dared hunt at all during his 
reputed time of passing, and were in great 
danger of starving because of the lack of food 
which might be obtained by hunting. 

Major Clinton had come all this way on what 
he was pleased to call an *‘ altruistic mission,” 
that is, the thing he was doing was not for him¬ 
self but for another. It had to do with the tin 
mines on Cape Prince of Wales Mountain. 
Byron knew little enough about it even now, 
but knew enough to feel that the man he had 
seen in the cabin at the foot of Dog Tooth 
Mountain must be a link in the chain which was 


66 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

soon to lead the major to a mysterious and 
startling revelation. 

One can think of many things during a five- 
mile tramp, especially if he is passing through 
a white wilderness where each quarter mile of 
the way looks exactly like the one before, it and 
the one behind. 

Byron did think of many things, his mind 
darting from one experience to another. At 
last he came back to the present and his polar 
bear ride of the day before. “ The major prom¬ 
ised us plenty of excitement once we got to the 
Straits, ” he said to himself with a chuckle. “ I 
can’t speak for Jerry or the major, but as for 
myself I will admit that I figure I’ve come 
through a great adventure. I have harpooned a 
polar bear, a monster, twelve feet from tip to 
tip. I harpooned him, and with the aid of my 
trusty native have brought him in. What’s 
» more, I shall soon have his skin as. a proof 
of it.” 

His lips curled in an amused smile. That wa.s 
the way he would first tell it to the boys o : f his 
class in school when he got home. He could 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


67 


see them stare. Then as further proof he would 
show them the place in the bear’s pelt where the 
harpoon point had entered. 

After enjoying their hero worship for a half 
hour, he would tell them the whole story. He 
could feel even now on his back the drubbing 
they would give him after that. 


CHAPTER VII 


SHADOWS OF COMING ADVENTURES 

“ And there will be other adventures,’’ he told 
himself as he rounded a corner and passed a 
deserted miner’s cabin that loomed, dark and 
gloomy, out of the morning snow-fog. “ There 
will be others quite as thrilling but not so 
dangerous and painful I hope.” He was limp¬ 
ing from a bruise on the knee and from his frost¬ 
bitten toes. 

What all of these adventures might be he was 
not able to jDrophesy. That they might be asso¬ 
ciated with three mysterious sets of circum¬ 
stances, he did not doubt. 

First, there was the major’s mystery. He 

had told the bovs little about it. It was asso- 

•/ 

ciated with tin mining. He had shown them 
some block nuggets of tin ore and had told them 
this much: The mining interests involved be¬ 
longed to a widow and her children. One night 

68 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


69 


as they had been seated by a camp fire he had 
said: 

“ One seldom goes in for great adventure 
purely for the adventure’s sake, nor for the 
profit which he himself will get out of it. Oftener 
he is thinking of others besides himself, perhaps 
those who are weaker, less able to take care of 
themselves. This is the great motive. If one 
enters into a great adventure from a purely 
selfish motive, when the supreme moment comes 
he many times is tempted to turn hack. ‘ For,’ 
he says to himself, 6 the reward is not worth 
the trials and dangers.’ But if he is doing it 
for others, he marches straight on, ready to face 
any danger, to endure all. 

“ What you hoys have for a motive in coming 
with me, I do not know. Since you are very 
young, and are red-blooded American boys, it is 
natural that pure love of adventure should bring 
you over these trails. As for me, I have traveled 
far in the Arctic. I have had my share of ad¬ 
venture. I came north this time in the interest 
of others. First, the interests of a mother and 
her children, who are, I fear, on the way to 


70 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

suffer a great wrong providing a certain person 
is not checkmated before he goes too far; sec¬ 
ond, in the interest of the Eskimos, who, because 
of their fear for this monster of the deep, this 
Saber-Tusk, the Azeezrukca, are being driven 
to the point of starvation. 

“ I have come to love the Eskimo people, be¬ 
cause I have lived much with them. Anything I 
may do for them will be but part payment of 
the great debt the white man owes to them. 
Time and again some poor prospector, lost, 
snow-blind, all but dead, has been picked up 
by them, has been given perhaps the only food 
in the igloo and has been nursed back to life. 
It is because of this that I am willing to attempt 
the capture of Old Saber-Tusk. However, I am 
free to admit that the blood in my veins flows 
red enough, young enough and free enough still 
to cause me to thrill at the thought of a real hunt 
after master game on the black waters of the 
Arctic. ’ ’ 

These, in substance, had been his words and, 
as Byron recalled them now, he thought too of 
the major’s story of his encounter with Old 


The Saber -Tush Walrus 


71 


Saber-Tusk. In liis attempt to recall this story 
and to compare it bit by bit with the tale told 
him by the Eskimo boy back there in the under¬ 
ground den, his memory was hazy on many par¬ 
ticulars. 

“ Have him tell it over again this evening by 
the firelight,’’ he told himself. 

At that he glanced away at the white stretches 
of ice that still covered the ocean. Soon this 
vast field of ice would be fretting at its anchor. 
Then there would come a day when it would 
all go drifting out to sea, not to return for 
months. This would leave Behring Strait filled 
only by black, rushing water and through these 
waters would come the walrus. With them would 
be Old Saber-Tusk. Like ancient Norsemen they 
would shove their boat from the rocky shore and 
rush away to do him battle. He thrilled at the 
thought and all but prayed for an early break-up 
in the sea. 

“ Whoa there,” he exclaimed, pulling himself 
up abruptly. “ I do believe that’s Old Club¬ 
foot’s track.” 

Old Clubfoot was a dog, not a man, and he 


72 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

probably was not a real clubfoot, though that 
was what they had named him. Byron had fol¬ 
lowed his tracks for hundreds of miles at a 
stretch but had never seen him. 

In soft snow this dog’s footprints were not 
hard to detect. At some time in his eventful 
dog life he had met with an accident. His 
right foreleg had been badly injured, perhaps 
had been broken and clumsily set. At any rate, 
as he walked, his toes, instead of stretching out 
fan-shape, directly before him, were all turned 
a quarter of a circle to the right, so that they 
seemed always to wish to turn aside while the 
rest of him was determined to go straight on. 

It was something of a shock to find the track 
here. “ It’s Old Clubfoot, all right,” he told 
himself after close scrutiny. 

And indeed there was little room for doubt. 
The wind of the previous night had sent a little 
eddy of loose snow over two chunks of broken 
ice and had piled it behind them. There had 
it lain, a perfect mould, soft and pliable, for the 
thing that should chance to impress itself upon 
it. Old Clubfoot had happened along and there 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


73 


was his mark, as perfect as if it had been chis¬ 
eled out of stone by a master sculptor. 

“ Have to tell the major about that,” Byron 
mumbled. “ It’s mighty curious.” 

His mind traveled back to the time two months 
before when he had first seen that track. The 
dog was a wheel-horse in a team of eight. (The 
team had passed over the trail before them.) 
They had noticed his tracks on their first night 
out of Valdez at the very start of their two 
months of dog-team travel. 

At that time the footprints had been fresh in 
the snow. “ Not more than a day’s travel ahead 
of us,” had been the major’s comment. “ We 
may overtake them in a day or two.” 

They did not overtake them, not even in a week 
or two. But since there had been no suspicion 
in any of their minds that any person in whom 
they might be interested had taken the trail be¬ 
fore them, they had made no effort to oatch up. 

It did seem a bit strange to strike out upon the 
trail each morning and to see here and there, im¬ 
pressed in the soft snow of forest or river, that 
same crooked dog track. 


74 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

Even then they had thought nothing of it, 
for, as the major had explained, this man might 
be a mail carrier bound for Fairbanks or some 
freighter with a load of precious freight — spe¬ 
cial drugs, for instance. 

When they had passed Fairbanks and were 
headed down the river to Nome, they were a 
little more surprised to find themselves still fol¬ 
lowing that mysterious stranger. 

Their interest, how r ever, never passed the stage 
of idle curiosity, for there were men enough and 
dog teams enough making the entire trail to 
Nome in late winter: Merchants wishing to be 
on hand to offer new trade goods when the sum¬ 
mer season broke; miners going in to superintend 
the washing out of low-grade pay dirt that had 
been taken from the mines during the wdnter; 
fur traders after the primest of fox, mink and 
marten skins; these and many others passed over 
this trail at that particular time of year. 

Byron had borne in his mind a secret wish 
that they might catch up with the driver of Old 
Clubfoot. Once this wish had all but been grati¬ 
fied. Because of a broken sled, the stranger 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


75 


had been obliged to lie over for a day at the 
Three Pines Eoad House. He bad left the place 
but two hours before they arrived. 

After that, by a sudden burst of speed he 
had put several hours of travel between them 
and had never been so close to them again. At 
Nome, a city of four thousand people and eight 
thousand dogs, Old Clubfoot and his master had 
apparently been lost to them. As they resumed 
their journey, bent on accomplishing the last 
hundred and fifty mile lap of their journey to 
Cape Prince of Wales, they had found no sign 
of Clubfoot’s having passed on before them. 

Indeed, this very moment was the first that 
had given any of them the slightest notion that 
Old Clubfoot and his master were any nearer to 
them than Nome. 

Now as the boy studied the footprint, his brow 
wrinkled as he murmured, “ I wonder if that 
man in the cabin at the foot of Dog Tooth Moun¬ 
tain could be the master of Old Clubfoot. I 
do wonder if he could.” 

As he turned to resume his journey he was in 
a thoughtful mood. Fifteen minutes later as he 


76 


The Boys’ Big Game Series , 


still trudged on lie declared, “ I must tell the 
major — I really think it’s important. Bet he 
missed a great chance. Should have caught up 
with Old Clubfoot and his master long ago. Any¬ 
way, that’s how it looks to me now.” 


CHAPTEE VIII 


THE MAJOR PUTS TWO AND TWO TOGETHER 

As he entered their cabin, Byron found the 
major drawing on his parka. Jerry was over by 
the stove devouring a hasty breakfast. 

“ Oh, here you are! ” exclaimed the major, 
evidently relieved. “ We’ve been hunting for 
you; we were out three hours before sunrise 
and were just going out again. Where’d you 
get your layout? Where have you been? What 
happened to you? ” 

At that Jerry, who was a short, solid, muscular 
boy with a smiling, freckled face, dropped his 
spoon and began asking questions so fast that 
Byron could do little more than stand and grin 
at them. 

“ If you’ll give me a chance,” he laughed, 
“ I’ll tell you that I’ve been out on the ice most 
of the night; that I spent the rest of it in a 
strange sort of Eskimo den; that I haven’t slept 

77 


78 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

a wink; and that I’m about to fall asleep stand¬ 
ing up.” 

“ Tell us about it,” demanded Jerry. “ We 
thought you might be dead.” 

“ And I might easily have been dead.” 

“ Well, tell us,” cried Jerry. 

“ Such a story as I have to tell,” laughed 
Byron, “ can only be properly told by the light 
of a driftw T ood tire. You get up a snappy, pitchy 
load of driftwood to-day while I sleep, then when 
night comes I’ll swap stories with the major. 
The tales we have to tell will blend well, with 

the crackle of vour fire.” 

«/ 

“ Aw! ” cried Jerry, “ c’m’on, now! No time 
like the present.” 

“ Nope,” said Byron with an air of finality, 
“I’m too dead to do the thing justice.” 

“ But you spoke of my story,” said the major. 
“ I have no new adventure to relate.” 

“ An old one will do quite as well,” smiled 
Byron. “ In fact, it’s an old one I want to 
hear — the story of your encounter with Saber- 
Tusk, the Azeezrukca. I want to compare it 
with one I heard not so many hours ago. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


79 


“ That will be quite easy,” said the major. 
“ One does not soon forget such experiences.” 

“ There is one thing, though,” said Byron, as 
if suddenly remembering, “ one or two things 
that I think I should tell you at once. You 
remember, Major, that you told us to be on the 
lookout for any person living in one of the 
deserted cabins in this vicinity? You said there 
might be one who was vitally connected with 
that mining business of your friend, the widow, 
and that if he were here it was of greatest im¬ 
portance that he be located at once.” 

The major nodded. 

“ Well, last night, before I went hunting seal, 
I walked over by Dog Tooth Mountain, about 
four miles from here, and set a trap for a blue 
fox who has a den over there. Right round 
the corner of a ledge from there you may have 
noticed a miner’s cabin. It’s merely a shack 
built of boards and tar paper, with a window 
on the lower side. It was getting dark by the 
time I rounded the rocks, and sure as I’m stand¬ 
ing here I saw a light in that cabin; not much 
of one, but a light all the same. It turned out 


80 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

to be a candle. But candles don’t go lighting 

themselves in lonelv cabins. Then I smelled 

•/ 

wood smoke, and I knew someone was staying 
there, temporarily at least. 

“ I slipped up quietly as I could, and not wish¬ 
ing to be seen, hunted round for a tear in the 
tar paper which would give me a chance to 
peep through a crack between boards. It wasn’t 
hard to find, for it’s a fairly old cabin and the 
wind’s whipped the paper about. When I got 
a good look at the inside I saw a man frying 
bacon over a rusty stove. 

“ Such a man as he was! I never saw a face 
like his — never knew that a human face could 
be so long. It was most all face too; not much 
forehead, but such a chin! 

“ Why, what’s the matter! ” he broke off 
abruptly. The major’s face had suddenly be¬ 
come a study of surprise and doubt. 

“ You mean to say you saw that man up 
there! ” 

“ I saw one that looked like that,” insisted 
Bryan stoutly. 

“ There is but one like him in the world. Your 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


81 


description of his face is perfect. Did he 
wear a large opal ring on his right hand? ” 

The major’s excitement was evident. 

44 Yes, I noticed that especially.” 

44 Can’t be anv mistake. It is the man. It is 
Ben Arnold, the old traitor. Why, the man he 
should have been named after, Benedict him¬ 
self, was not so great a traitor. But to think 
of his being up here! ” exclaimed the major. 
44 To my certain knowledge he w T as in Seattle not 
a week before we started on our trip.” 

44 Well,” said Byron, 44 that’s all there is to 
tell about that, except there isn’t much of any¬ 
thing in the shack. Might have been some 
blankets in a bunk — too dark to see. Guess 
he isn’t there very permanently. I didn’t dis¬ 
turb him; you didn’t ask us to; just told us to 
report.” 

44 That’s right,” agreed the major. 44 You 
couldn’t have done better. Leave him to me.” 

Byron was about to seek his bunk when another 
matter occurred to him. 

44 Oh, yes,” he exclaimed, 44 you could never 
guess whose track I saw down by the beach.” 


82 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ I'll take one guess,” smiled the major. 
44 Old Clubfoot’s.” 

u You read my mind!” exclaimed Byron in 
surprise. 

“ No.” 

“ Then how could you know? ” 

“ Simple enough. I’ve been putting two and 
two together since you told me of seeing Arnold 
in the shack. It was he who preceded us all 
the way from Valdez. He is the master of Old 
Clubfoot, beyond a doubt.” 

“ Well,” said Byron, “ if that’s true, it’s one 
mystery solved. But where were Clubfoot and 
his teammates last night? ” 

“ Got them hid out somewhere, or maybe he’s 
given them to a native down in the Kingegan 
village to keep. 

“ Well,” added the major a moment later, as 
he pressed a clip of cartridges in his rifle, ‘ ‘ you 
go on and have your sleep. Jerry and I may 
have a real adventure to tell of after all when 
we assemble round the camp fire to-night.” 

Since he looked at the rifle as he said this, 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


83 


Byron was of the opinion that he meant to pay 
a visit to the cabin at the foot of Dog Tooth 
Mountain. In this guess he was not far from 
right. 


CHAPTEE IX 


OLD JAGGERS AND HIS GOLD 

When Byron awoke it was dark. Another day 
had passed. Since there was no light in the 
room, he assumed that his companions had not 
yet returned. Lighting a lamp, he found him¬ 
self alone. A wind had risen while he slept 
and was raising quite a rumpus outside. Every 
now and again a wild whirl of snow was dashed 
against the window with such force that it 
sounded like handfuls of coarse sand. 

“ Wonder where they are,” he murmured to 
himself. Hope they’re not too far away on such 
a night. I’m afraid it’s going to be a bad one.” 

Opening the door of the room, he stepped into 
a long, narrow hallway that served as a wind¬ 
break to the entrance. Finding this hallway 
crowded with piles of snowy driftwood, he 
brushed awav the snow as best he could, then 
carried the logs in one by one to pile them up 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


85 


beside the huge fireplace at the far end of the 
room. 

“ Jerry did his duty nobly, ” he smiled to 
himself. “ We’ll surely have a cheerful blaze 
to-night, and we’ll sure need it. Br-r-r what a 
cold!' Old winter’s making his last brave fight.” 
He had sh'aken down a large stove in the center 
of the room. It was now glowing red-hot, but 
the heat made little impression on the tempera¬ 
ture of the room. 

After placing a huge kettle of red beans on 
the top of the stove and hacking two thick steaks 
from the frozen carcass of a reindeer hanging in 
the hallway, he sat down with his feet on the 
fender to think. There were coals buried be¬ 
neath the ashes in the fireplace, and kindling in 
abundance, but he would not light the fire until 
he heard the footsteps of his companions in the 
hallway. He would sit by the stove and think. 

As he caught the sound of the rushing storm 
outside, he shivered and thought what the conse¬ 
quences might have been had this storm arisen 
while he was being dragged about on the ice 
by the bear. From that he began to think of his 


86 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

friend, the young Eskimo, and wondered if he 
had succeeded in bringing the bear meat safely 
to his den. Byron hoped so, for these storms he 
knew sometimes lasted for a week. He and his 
little Eskimo wife would need the food. Byron 
wished that he might return the borrowed cloth¬ 
ing this night as promised, but knew it would 
not be expected. 

“ Wonder what could induce him to live in 
such a hole, he and the girl, all by themselves,’’ 
he thought. Then he remembered the Eskimo 
boy’s remarks regarding those who were hunting 
for him, and how he had left for this place in a 
storm, that there might be no telltale tracks. 

“ Wonder what he has done,” he murmured. 
“ Wonder if it is the United States deputies who 
are looking for him. He might have been mak¬ 
ing moonshine; some Eskimos try that. He might 
have killed a reindeer that didn’t just exactly 
belong to him. I’ve heard of such cases. But 
somehow he doesn’t seem to be that sort of a 
chap. But then you never can tell— ” 

Suddenly breaking off his wonderings, be 
leaped to his feet to hasten toward the fireplace. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


87 


He had caught the sound of loud stamping in 
the hallway. The major and Jerry had come 
and he was jolly glad of it. They would be cold 
— now for the fire. 

Pushing the ashes this way and that until a 
bed of red coals lay gleaming before him, he 
then threw on chips and shavings, light wood and 
small chunks, to he rewarded a few seconds later 
by a flash of flames and the laughing roar of a 
fire that went bursting up the chimney. 

His tw T o companions looked like snow men 
when they entered. With frost clinging to their 
caps and faces, with snow blown thick in their 
skin garments, they were a sight to behold. 

“ ‘ Blow, wind, blow; not all your snow can 
quench our hearth fire’s ruddy glow,’ ” shouted 
Jerry as he dragged his cap from his head to 
beat it against the wall. 

They were closely followed by a pack of dogs 
and soon the place was awhirl with snow beaten 
from garments and shaken from the furry coats 
of their canine friends. 

Byron watched the major closely. He be¬ 
lieved in finding out as many things as possible 


88 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

without bothering to ask questions. When the 
major wiped the dampness from his rifle, then 
stood it in the corner without cleaning it, he 
knew that no shot had been fired by him that day, 
for the major never neglected to clean his rifle 
even though but a single cartridge had been used 
in a day’s hunt. 

Neither the major nor Jerry said anything of 
their day’s adventures until the beans and rein¬ 
deer steak, topped by canned peaches and 
cheese, had been eaten with a hearty relish. 

“ Well,” said the major as he drew his chair 
to a comfortable position before the roaring fire, 
“ what say we make an evening of it? There 
couldn’t be a better place for spinning yarns.” 

His glances strayed up the walls of the cabin, 
over the smoke-blackened beams, to the weather- 
beaten roof, then down again to the huge fire¬ 
place, whose stone hearth was twelve feet across, 
and whose crude andirons were spread to receive 
a ten-foot length of driftwood. 

“ This cabin,” said the major, “ were it able 
to talk, could tell tales of adventure and blood¬ 
shed that would make our poor stories seem like 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


89 


nursery rhymes. It belongs to another age than 
ours, to an age when the gold of Alaska glittered 
all undiscovered in the beds of streams, when 
ivory, furs and whalebone were the only treas¬ 
ures sought by the white man, and when the 
whalers that visited these waters were little bet¬ 
ter than pirates. Indeed, some of them were real 
pirates, pirates from the coast of Asia. 

“ In those days men who had pressing reasons 
for leaving the States shipped on whalers and, 
with a little stock of trade goods, got themselves 
dropped off at some good hunting point on this 
mainland of Alaska. Then they would build 
them some sort of a cabin near an Eskimo vil¬ 
lage and become in time free traders, trappers 
and whale hunters. 

“ The old chap who built this cabin was un¬ 
commonly successful. He was a born organizer 
— have to be to organize Eskimos. He did or¬ 
ganize them, though, into whale hunting crews. 
He furnished them with food and hunting equip¬ 
ment, and in return for this demanded half their 
catch as his share. Those were the days for 
whaling. Ten whales in a season was not con- 


90 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

sidered a large catch. Nowadays if a single 
whale is taken it is an occasion for great re¬ 
joicing. 

“ Well, Old Jaggers, the man who built this 
cabin, prospered tremendously. He traded much 
of his ivory and bone to the whale ships for 
more supplies, and some he is supposed to have 
sold for gold. 

‘* This cabin he built with the aid of the Eski¬ 
mos out of driftwood logs. Wonderful timber 
drifting down the Yukon was lodged on these 
shores. See how massive they are. Built to 
stand, this cabin was.” 

The major paused, his glances once more stray¬ 
ing over the interior. A fresh gust of wind rat¬ 
tled at the windows, to send wild sweeps of snow 
high against the door. 

As Jerry’s eyes followed those of the major, 
they suddenly came to rest in the very peak of 
the cabin, over the fireplace. 

“ Say! ” he exclaimed, “ there’s a reindeer 
head up there.” 

“ More likely a caribou head. Too large for 
a reindeer,” said the major, “ and, besides, from 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


91 


the amount of dust piled upon it, I’d say it be¬ 
longed back there in the days of Old Jaggers 
himself. There were no domesticated reindeer 
in Alaska in those days. They belong to the 
gold-hunting period.” 

The head spoken of was not mounted. After 
the skin and meat had been taken from the bones, 
it had been hung up there, a grinning skull and 
a pair of spreading antlers. 

“ Hideous sort of thing,” said Byron. 

“ But what became of Old Jaggers? ” asked 
Jerry. “ Went back to the States with his gold, 
I suppose.” 

“ No,” said the major thoughtfully, “it’s quite 
certain he didn’t. He’s supposed to have had a 
very good reason for not going back; robbed a 
bank, killed a man or something. Just what did 
happen to him, Eskimo tradition does not tell 
us. He may have been killed by some drunken 
Eskimo. If he was it would never be told. 
Eskimos killed the first white teacher at the vil¬ 
lage round the Point. Three of them were exe¬ 
cuted for it. Since that time they’ve been very 
slow to talk about such things.” 


92 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ And his gold? ” said Jerry, leaning forward 
eagerly. 

“ Oh, as to that,” laughed the major, “ there 
may have been none in the beginning. If there 
was, some thriving whaler’s crew may have taken 
it, or the Eskimos may have found it. Tradition 
has it that the gold is hidden about this cabin or 
in the rocky hills above. Many’s the search 
that’s been made for it, but, as far as I know, 
not a single half eagle has been found.” 

Jerry’s eyes strayed away to the gleaming 
skull of the caribou and it seemed to him that 
the thing winked at him. 

“ But what’s this adventure of yours? ” the 
major said, turning to Byron. 

44 I’d rather you’d tell of your encounter with 
Old Saber-Tusk first,” said Byron. “ I want to 
compare your experience with the one I heard.” 

“ All right, everything in its proper order,” 
laughed the major. “ Jerry, throw on a couple 
of sticks of wood. There is nothing like the 
snap and crack of salt-laden driftwood to add 
spice to a tale.” 


CHAPTER X 

A TRAGIC BATTLE 

“ Well,” began the major, staring intently at 
the fire, “ it isn’t much of a story, that one of 
my encounter with the notorious Saber-Tusk 
walrus, but such as it is I think I can tell 
it best on a wild night with a fire such as ours 
roaring up the chimney. 

“ You see, I came up here expressly for a 
hunt; that is, I came to the Eskimo village 
around the Point. That is the largest village 
of the kind in the world, and before the rein¬ 
deer herds made life easy for many of the 
strongest and best of them, there never were 
braver or more skillful hunters than those to 
be found in that village. Even now they do 
pretty well. 

“ I believe there is no place on the earth 
where so much interesting hunting may be found 

93 


94 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

in a single month as at Cape Prince of Wales 
on Behring: Strait. You come in over the trail 
the first of May. At that time ice still crowds 
the Straits, and there is a fair chance that you 
may hag a polar hear or two. Brown seal and 
oogrook (big seal) are abundant, and on land 
there are those little ‘ mountain quail 9 to pro¬ 
vide you with a day’s entertainment and a splen¬ 
did supper. 

“ But of course the great hunting time comes 
when the ice breaks up, and the schools of whales 
and herds of walrus pass north to their summer 
homes in the Arctic. 

“ Walrus it was that had brought me there 
that season. Two years before I had killed my 
polar hear; more than once I had been present 
when a whale was harpooned; hut never had I 
ridden the waters of the Straits when the walrus 
were passing. One way or another I had always 
missed them. 

“ Came near missing them this time, too. 
Main herd passed in the night while I was 
asleep. 

“ One day, however, the Eskimos told me the 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


95 


big bulls had been seen not five miles from the 
Straits. The weather was fine. I never saw a 
calmer sea. Gathering up my rifle and harpoon, 
I gave the head-man of the skin-boat a half 
sack of sugar as payment for my passage, and 
we were awav. 

1/ 

“ Those skin-boats are frail looking things. 
They have a skeleton frame of driftwood which 
is covered over with split walrus skin. Skin’s 
not thicker than cowhide, and it’s yellowish in 
color, so transparent that as you look at it from 
inside you can see every little wavelet that 
dances against the side of the boat. 

“ Well, we started out in one of these skin- 
boats, thirty-five feet long, ten Eskimos and my¬ 
self— sail of blue drill and mast of driftwood; 

reminded me of the davs of the old Norsemen. 

«/ 

“ Even in those days Old Saber-Tusk had won 
quite a reputation for himself. In fact, I be¬ 
lieve it had been as much as two years before 
that he had attacked a whaleboat manned by 
three white men and five Eskimos, and had com¬ 
pletely riddled it. The white men could swim 
and were picked up by some Eskimos in a skin-' 


96 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

boat. Eskimos couldn’t swum, so four out of 
the five were lost. 

“ This had made a profound impression on 
the natives, and ever after that when they went 
out after the old bulls, if they chanced to be 
Christian natives, they held a prayer meeting 
about it. If they held to their ancient views 
about spirits of dead whales, walrus and the 
like, the local witch doctor got out his weird 
masks, his singers and his tom-tom drums, and 
held a sort of native mass for them. Even after 
this was done some of them were too much afraid 
to venture out, for the instance of the whale¬ 
boat was far from being Old Saber-Tusk’s last 
appearance. In the previous season he had twice 
attacked skin-boats, and in one of these two men 
were killed and a boy crippled for life. 

“ How he ever escaped their rifles and har¬ 
poons, I can’t tell. Only thing is, such a walrus 
has a skull two inches thick and it takes a lot 
of body hits to kill him. Twice he had been 
harpooned and had broken the skin-rope that 
should have held him. 

“ Superstition still has a strong hold upon 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


97 


the Eskimo people. In their ancient folk tales 
there appears a creature known as the walrus- 
dog. He was supposed to travel with the walrus 
herds. Being many times larger than a walrus 
and possessed of two rows of sharp teeth like 
a dog, he was sure to destroy any natives who 
dared to hunt on the edge of the herd he was 
guarding. Many of the natives maintain that 
this Saber-Tusk is no walrus at all, but a young 
walrus-dog who is yearly growing larger and 
larger, and who will, if not killed, in time drive 
all hunters from the Straits or destroy them. 

“ Of course that sounds absurd. But you 
never can tell. Bemember reading about the dis¬ 
covery of a prehistoric monster living in a lake 
in Africa! Then why not up here! Jerry, touch 
up the fire a bit. ? ’ 

Jerry shook himself from the spell of the story 

to poke up the glowing coals and to throw on 

three heavv sticks of driftwood. These sizzled' 
•/ 

for a moment, then burst into flames. The snap 
and crack of the salt-seasoned wood seemed to 
stir the major to keen recollections. 

“ I’ll tell you why,” he said suddenly, “ I 


98 


The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

know Saber-Tusk is a walrus and not a pre¬ 
historic monster. Because I saw him with my 
own eyes and he not six feet away; saw his 
gleaming tusks, his bristling moustache, his 
greedy, gleaming little eyes. That’s how I 
know.” He pounded the arm of his chair for 
emphasis, then leaning far forward continued 
in a low, tense tone: 

“ We hadn’t been away from land a half hour 
when a dense fog came drifting in. It’s always 
that way on the Straits when there’s a calm. 
Two of the natives were for turning back, but 
our head-man was a daring chap. I offered to 
donate the other half of the sack of sugar to 
further the enterprise, and that settled it. 

“ To add to the gloom of the fog, it was 
night; not dark, but almost worse — a sort of 
gloomy midnight twilight. 

u Fog’s peculiar stuff. You can fancy you 
see almost anything coming through it — a 
square-rigger under full sail bearing down upon 
you; an island looming up where no island should 
be; a whole herd of savage monsters surround¬ 
ing you on every side. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


99 


“ We had plowed silently through that ghost¬ 
like curtain of vapor for two hours. Every nerve 
was on edge. Even the most placid Eskimo of 
them all, old Teragloona, w T ho had been appointed 
executioner for his own cousin years before 
and had done his duty like a man, was shaky. 

“ Then, of a sudden, someone whispered a 
word. The steersman turned the boat half 
round. Someone had heard something. I hadn’t, 
and thought it was a case of nerves. 

“ It wasn’t. Pretty soon I heard it; the bark 
of a walrus. It was far away and indistinct, 
but it raised the hair under my parka hood. 

6 ‘ Perhaps you’ve heard in the night the dis¬ 
tant bark of some huge mastiff who is known 
to be vicious, and have imagined him coming 
your way. Well, it was like that only worse. A 
hoarse ‘ Ouk-Ouk-Ouk! Horook-Horook-Horook! ’ 
I tell you I saw every hand that held a paddle 
or an oar tremble, but they rowed straight on 
through that fog toward that lugubrious sound. 
That’s what I call nerve. Jerry, stir up the fire.” 

Jerry stared at him blankly for a second; then, 
as if walking in a dream, seized a bit of drift- 


100 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

wood and threw it on the fire. This was followed 
by two others, then, as it blazed np, he sank 
limply into his chair. 

“ Of course,” resumed the major, a huskiness 
creeping into his voice, “ there wasn’t one of 
us all that could have sworn it was Old Saber- 
Tusk we were hearing, yet not one would have 
doubted it. Old Teragloona, he who executed 
his cousin, leaned over to me and whispered, 
‘ I’ve heard as many of them as the people of 
my village have fingers and toes, but I’ve never 
heard one like that.’ And there was a certain 
terrible note of defiance in it that made your 
blood run cold. 

“ Well, we had gone on toward that bark for 
some time, with it growing louder and louder, 
when all of a sudden it ceased. Not a sound. 
Not a low bark nor a splash; not a thing to 
guide us; but we kept straight on. 

“ If the old fellow’s bark was terrifying, his 
silence was terrific. I’ve never felt a thicker 
silence in my life. You could have caught a 
whisper on a radiophone with your unaided ears, 
if any had been passing that way. 



The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


101 


“ Five minutes passed; ten; fifteen. I’d begun 
to think we’d missed him, and had settled back in 
my place, when of a sudden old Teragloona 
dropped his paddle, seized his harpoon, sprang 
for the prow of the boat and stood there mo¬ 
tionless as a statue. I can see him still, face set, 
muscles rigid, harpoon tilted at just such an 
angle, silent as a sphinx. I knew there could 
be no mistake. Teragloona made none. He was 
that kind. And he had seen Old Saber-Tusk, 
none other. I read that from the look on his 
face. I tell you that was a tense moment. Jerry, 
the fire.” 

Jerry’s mouth closed with a half-audible 
“ Awk.” With the utmost difficulty he dragged 
his eyes from the major’s face, then rose stiffly 
to throw a single piece of driftwood on the fire, 
to drop into his chair again. 

There was a cold smile on the major’s face as 
he went on. u We hadn’t long to wait. Came 
a rush of waters as of a giant water-wheel, a 
savage ‘ Ark-Ark! ’ then a huge head appeared 
not five feet from our boat. 

“ The next instant there came a loud thwack. 


102 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

Teragloona had thrown. He had not missed. 
Instantly, it seemed to me, our boat received such 
a shock as turned it halfway over and set it 
listing hard to port. Just as we were scrambling 
for the other side, the strain suddenly gave way. 
The boat righted itself. Teragloona pulled in, 
his slack line. Three feet of it was gone, the 
three feet next to the point that had been driven 
into the monster’s hide. And, believe me or not, 
when I picked up the end of that rope I saw that 
instead of being broken it had been cut — cut 
as with a sharp knife.” 

“ Oh! Ah! ” breathed Byron. “ That was 
exactlv what I wanted to know.” 

The major was silent. A large metal clock 
ticked loudly in the corner. Neither of the boys 
had heard it until now. And now it appeared to 
have broken suddenly loose with a prodigious 
clatter. Jerry, glancing up at the caribou’s 
skull in the corner, would have sworn that it 
nodded. But this perhaps was more real than 
it seems, for at that moment a shock of the 
storm, ruder than any other, shook the stout 
cabin until the beams rattled and creaked. 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


103 


And — and is that all? ” breathed Jerry. 

“ No,” said the major, a doubtful smile 
spreading over his face, “ I only wish it had 
been. It was really only the beginning. How¬ 
ever, the rest may be quickly told. Jerry— ” 
He nodded toward the tire. 

With a resoluteness born of despair, Jerry 
rose and threw on all the wood that remained 
beside the fireplace. In an instant the fire blazed 
up with such a savage light as made the beast’s 
skull above appear a thing of marble. The 
major was obliged to move back into the deeper 
shadows before he resumed his story. 

“ Well, sir,” the major tilted his chair far 
forward until he seemed about to leap into the 
fire, “ I looked at old Teragloona and there he 
was in the prow, a coil of skin-rope in one hand 
and a second harpoon in the other, exactly as if 
nothing had happened. No, not exactly. There 
was a look on his face such as I have never seen 
on human face before. I think there must have 
been such a look there when he lifted the rifle 
that killed his best friend, his cousin, years 
before. 


104 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ That Saber-Tusk would charge again, he 
did not doubt, and he didn’t need to. He did 
charge and this time he just grazed the side of 
our boat. Teragloona was there. You have to 
hand it to him; he drove his point deep and the 
rope was twice the strength. 

“ The thing that happened that time brought 
us all to our feet with a groan. When the old 
beast came to the end of his rope he never 
stopped. He went straight on. There came a 
crashing, ripping sound. The boat lurched to 
one side; I felt a rush of water at my feet. I 
looked to the right and what I saw set my mind 
reeling. I saw a pole swinging out to sea, and 
clinging to the pole with the fright of death on 
his face was a boy, a sixteen-year-old Eskimo 
boy, the only boy we had with us, old Tera¬ 
gloona ’s son. 

“ That pole was torn from the right side of 
our boat, ripped clean. The ribs stuck up like 
the ribs of a dead horse picked by ravens. The 
boy had been leaning on it when the monster 
tore it loose. In an instant pole and boy dis¬ 
appeared in the fog. Not an Eskimo of the lot 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


105 


could swim, and I say it to my shame, neither 
could I. We never saw the hoy again. 

“ Just how we managed to keep our boat 
afloat until we could reach an ice cake I hardly 
know. Once there, we tottered up the side by 
lashing our long paddles along the top end of 
the ribs. Next morning we reached home with 
a story to tell, but a sad one, for I tell you that 
boy of Teragloona’s was an up-standing lad and 
the pride of his father’s heart.” 

* ‘ Don’t you think — ’’ began Byron. 

“ I don’t think; I know. Within a half hour 
of the time he passed from our sight that boy 
was dead. Not a soul could endure in that sting¬ 
ing salt water longer.” 

For a long moment, save for the racing metal 
clock and the roaring storm, there was silence. 

“ I am counting on Teragloona as head-man 
of our boat when we go after Saber-Tusk,” said 
the major at last. 

‘‘ Will — do you think he’ll go? ” asked Byron. 

“ Will he! I’m told that his greatest grief 
is that many of his fellow natives are so timid 
that he can’t get a suitable crew for hunting the 


106 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

monster. But with the aid of the three of us 
I think he’ll make out. It was partly that I 
might aid old Teragloona in his revenge that I 
came up here this year.” 

“ Perhaps,” said Byron, “ my young Eskimo 
will join us.” 

“ Your young Eskimo? ” said the major in 
surprise. 

“ Yes, the one who saved me from the polar 
hear. “ Oh! ” he exclaimed, “ I forgot that my 
story had not been told. It’s all so recent and 
so vivid in my memory that it seems everyone 
should know it.” 

“ Your story shall be next,” smiled the major. 
“ Jerry, the fire! ” 


CHAPTER XI 


A TRIP TO THE MOON 

If Byron’s story was less exciting than the 
major’s, it was not because his experience had 
been less thrilling, but because he had not the 
major’s skill for telling it. However, he told it 
well enough for a boy. When he came to the 
part where he was being dragged over the ice 
and through the water by the polar bear, even 
the major became so absorbed that he forgot to 
remind Jerry of the fire. 

“ That young Eskimo seems to be the right 
sort of chap,” the major approved, as Byron 
told of their race, half clothed, across the ice. 
“ I think he’d do.” 

“ To go with us after Old Saber-Tusk! ” said 
Byron. . 

‘‘ To be sure.” 

“ I thought that too,” said Byron. “ But wait 

107 


108 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

until I have finished. You may see a real ob¬ 
stacle in the way.” 

The major smiled as Byron described the 
Eskimo’s den. 

“ That,” he said, “ was not more of a den 
than any other Alaskan Eskimo’s house. They 
are all alike; built of driftwood logs, then sodded 
over six or eight feet deep afterwards. They 
have to be built that way to keep out the cold. 
Shouldn’t wonder if they were modeled after a 
ground squirrel’s nest. The one you speak of 
was probably built years ago and later deserted. 
We’ll find them all along the coast if we care to 
look for them. Your friend has taken temporary 
possession of this one.” 

“ But listen to this,” said Byron. Then he 
proceeded to tell of the Eskimo’s statement that 
he had escaped in a night of storm from some 
persons who appeared to seek him. 

“ Probably United States deputies,” sug¬ 
gested Jerry. 

“ I doubt it,” said the major thoughtfully. 
“ It’s surprising the way these primitive people 
keep our complicated laws. I’ve known one of 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


109 


them to follow a white man twenty miles to give 
him a small pouch of tobacco which he had left 
behind by mistake.’’ 

“ Whom can he be hiding from? ” asked 
Byron. 

“ Don’t know. Got a guess, that’s all,” smiled 
the major, “ but it has so little real basis that 
I’m not even going to tell you what it is now. 
Anyway, we’ll take your Eskimo boy along if 
he’ll go, and ask no questions.” 

They were destined to do that very thing. 
They did take the boy along and this got them 
into a fight that was not with any wild beast, 
but with men. The conditions and reasons were 
most extraordinary, but this must come much 
]ater in the story. 

“ That reminds me,” said the major. 
il There’s an affair coming off over in the native 
village round the Point that might interest you 
boys. Old Ne-pos-ok, the head witch-doctor, is 
planning a visit to the moon.” 

44 To the moon! The moon! ” echoed the 

boys. 

u Yes,” said the major, with a very solemn 


110 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

face. 44 Witch-doctors among these people have 
for many generations been making such trips. 
Jules Verne is not in it with them. 

44 You see the Eskimo tradition has it that the 
Father Raven came from the moon originally. 
It was he who created the first man. Planted 
him in a pea-pod, he did. After three days this 
man tried to straighten out his legs and so 
burst the pod. He tumbled to the ground, began 
hopping about and men have been hopping 
about on the earth ever since. Father Raven 
went back to the moon, but it has been the 
privilege of the shrewdest of witch-doctors to 
take spirit flight and make him a visit at cer¬ 
tain intervals since then. Jerry, the fire.” 

Jerry grinned as he brought wood from the 
hallway and threw it on the fire. 

44 How does he do it? ” he asked, still grin¬ 
ning as he sat down. 

44 I can only tell you how he seems to do it,” 
the major smiled back. 44 I’ve never really seen 
it myself, nor will you unless you hide out be¬ 
hind a cake of ice or pile of driftwood and listen 
in. The presence of white men at this ceremony 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


111 


is strictly taboo, for the simple reason that 
they’d want to look into matters too closely, I 
suppose.’’ 

“ But how do they go about it? ” Jerry in¬ 
sisted. 

“ Well,” said the major, drawing on his solemn 
face once more, “ spirit flight can only be ac¬ 
complished through fire. Fire releases spirits. 
If you are burned, your spirit soars. I guess 
you’d agree with them so far.” 

“ Sure would,” grinned Jerry. 

“ Well, when the time arrives for a flight to 
the moon, the doctor has his men arrange a huge 
pile of driftwood. This is set up in a circle with 
a hole in the center and a small gap at the back 
side. Of course, if you didn’t have this gap the 
noble doctor couldn’t enter, and if he did not 
enter that small circular enclosure, he couldn’t 
be burned, and if he wasn’t burned, he couldn’t 
visit Father Baven in the moon. 

“ When all is ready, all the people assemble 
on the side opposite the opening; it is a dan¬ 
gerous taboo for any person to see the doctor 
take his place. However, he does take his place 


112 The Boys 1 Big Game Series 

in the center of the pile. Then all the wood is 
lighted about him until a circle of dense smoke 
rises all around him. On every side the flames 
leap high. The people in awed silence watch the 
flames and marvel. 

“ They listen intently and presently they hear 
the old doctor’s voice saying, 6 I am beginning 
to feel light. I am light as the wild duck that 
floats on the water. Now I’m light as a sea¬ 
gull. Now I am like a swan’s feather that floats 
down from the clouds. Now I am a feather; now 
I am vapor; I am smoke; a breath. I rise; I 
rise. I go up — up — up. Farewell, my people. 
When the sun arises over the mountain I will 
return. ’ 

“ Then everyone shouts, ‘ He has gone! He 
is gone to the moon. He will return! Ne-pos-ok 
is a great doctor.’ So they hurry back to their 
igloos and await his return.” 

The major smiled at the boys. 

“ And he returns? ” said Byron. 

“ When the sun rises over the mountain,” 
nodded the major. 

“ Huh, he never goes at all — just slips out 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


113 


of that opening and skips/’ grumbled Jerry the 
skeptic. 

“ Now, now! my son,” said the major, hold¬ 
ing up a warning finger, “ you are suggesting 
matters that I have no knowledge of. You for¬ 
get that I have never witnessed one of these 
flights.” 

Jerry ’s eyes wandered toward an article fas¬ 
tened to the opposite wall, a rather unusual bit 
of equipment for an Arctic cabin. 

66 And when did you say this next flight was 
to come off? ” he asked. 

“ Day after to-morrow^ night, I was told, on 
the beach before the doctor’s house. Rather 
rough out beyond there, I believe; plenty of ice 
piled up there,” smiled the major. “ Mind you, 
I’m not suggesting anything, but don’t forget 
that no such flight has ever been attempted when 
it was known that white folks were looking on.” 

“ And they won’t know it this time, leave that 
to me,” grinned Jerry. Again his glance strayed 
to the wall. It was almost a loving look that he 
bestowed upon the unusual object hanging there. 

One never knows what he will find in a de- 


114 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

serted cabin on the shore of the Arctic. In one 
cabin there may be a hundred-pound bag of lima 
beans that has never been opened; in another 
a pair of palm-beach trousers; a complete set 
of dental instruments; a mariner’s compass; a 
speedometer to an automobile; what does not 
one find? The affair that Jerry was looking at 
was one of those short, svringe-like chemical fire 
extinguishers which one sees hanging about on 
the walls of steamer cabins, on the sides of auto¬ 
mobiles, and like places. How it had come 
there, Jerry had no notion. Whether it had been 
bought, borrowed or stolen he could not tell. 
That it was in a first rate state of repair and 
in good working order, and that it would ex¬ 
tinguish a certain amount of fire with neatness 
and dispatch, he did not doubt. If he had any 
notion of using it on any occasion in the near 
future, he did not communicate this fact to his 
companions. 

“ Where’d you get all this glad news? ” 
Byron asked of the major. 

“ W 7 e were over at the village looking for a 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


115 


friend,’’ answered the major as he hitched his 
chair closer to the fire. 

“ What luck! ” 

“ That, I suppose,” said the major thought¬ 
fully, “ is the next story of the program. That, 
I take it, will close the evening’s performance. 
Jerry, how about a little more fire? ” 


CHAPTER XII 


TRAILING A MAN 

Jerry and the major exchanged smiles as 
Byron settled back comfortably in anticipation 
of a long and thrilling account of their day’s 
adventure. 

“ As the war reports had a way of expressing 
it,” said the major, “ we have nothing worthy 
of note to report.” 

“ You didn’t see him? ” asked Byron quickly. 

“ Failed utterly to connect with our man. 
There are days,” said the major, now in a 
thoughtful mood, “ when even the most event- 
filled lives are devoid of excitement. When we 
have no exciting events of the near past to think 
of, we turn naturally to the more distant past 
or to the future. When I have told what little 
there is worth telling of this day’s doing, I hope 
you will pardon me for going a little way back 
into the past, then a little forward to the future 

116 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


117 


while I tell yon why I am so particularly anxious 
to meet this man Arnold, whom I believe to 
be a rascal.’’ 

Even Jerry sat up and took notice when he 
caught these words, for he was very anxious to 
know more of the history of the events that had 
brought the major so many hundred miles over 
a winter trail to visit a land that was not new 
to him. 

“ Mind you,” the major held up a hand as in 
warning, ‘‘ I don’t say this man Arnold whom 
I hmow to he a traitor; I say this man whom I 
believe to he a traitor. I mav he mistaken. Bet- 

c 

ter men than I have been, and that’s a thing to 
bear in mind. 

The hoys nodded their agreement. 

“ First, then,” he said, turning to Byron, 
“ we visited the cabin you told us of and found 
it deserted. There was evidence enough, freshly 
burned ashes in the stove and litter about the 
place, to indicate that it had been recently oc¬ 
cupied. We found one footprint in the soft 
snow which I believe to have been Arnold’s. It 
was the mark of a very large native skin-boot. 


118 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

He has large feet and would doubtless wear 
skin-boots, as most sour-dough miners do. 

“ We went down to the native village to look 
for traces of him there but found none. There 
were, indeed, .several white men’s dogs in the 
village, but the*se may have been dogs owned by 
Eskimos. They often trade for white men’s 
dogs, especially leaders. Bird dogs and blood¬ 
hounds make the finest leaders because they have 
a splendid sense of smell which enables them to 
follow a dav-old, wind-blown trail which no 

v 7 

human being could possibly trace out. These 
dogs are of course not native to Alaska. 

“ That’s about all there is to tell about to¬ 
day’s proceedings. Now about the past and 
future: 

“ Lloyd Lovejoy and I were pals in school; 
that is, there were three of us: Lloyd, myself and 
a girl named Marjory Maynard. We were all 
from the same little town. We chummed it to¬ 
gether all through college. Then, I suppose 
because he was better looking and more dashing, 
also because she loved him more than me, 
Marjory married Lloyd and I remained single. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


119 


There was never any hard feelings; never could 
be between real pals. 

“ I joined the army and rose to the rank of 
major in six years. Then, having gotten my¬ 
self discharged, I came home. In brushing up 
old acquaintances, I found that Lloyd had done 
well in business for a time and had a nice home 
and three children, two girls and a boy, but 
that a year before he had fallen victim to the 
gold fever and had gone to Alaska. How he 
was getting on up there no one seemed to know. 

“ The next news I received regarding the 
family, was that Lloyd had died in Alaska. I 
hurried at once to his home to express my sym¬ 
pathy and to offer my services if they were 
needed. I found Marjory so stricken with grief 
that at first she was unable to tell me much of 
his affairs. At last she did tell me that he had 
had a partner named Ben Arnold, who was sup¬ 
posed to be an experienced miner; that together 
they had located some tin mining claims on Cape 
Prince of Wales Mountain; that he had taken 
one for her and one for each of the children, as 
well as one for himself; that he had always ex- 


120 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

pressed the greatest confidence in his partner, 
and that beyond doubt in a year or two they 
would be immensely rich. 

“ Having been stationed on this coast for two 
years while in the army, I discounted these 
prospects somewhat, though I never told her so, 
but hoped they might get something comfortable, 
for there were, I knew, veins of tin on the 
mountain. 

“ Again I was gone for two years. When I 
returned I found the little home badly in need 
of repair, and the children going about in neat 
but very much patched garments. Knowing that 
there had been some life insurance and some 
money left from Lloyd’s business, I was nat¬ 
urally surprised. 

“ When I called on Marjory, she expressed 
greatest joy at seeing me. She unburdened her 
mind at once by telling me all that had happened. 
It seems that this man Arnold is a blood-sucking 
leech, a swindler who does not stop at robbing 
widows and orphans. At least, that is what he 
seems to have done to them. Under the pre¬ 
tense of using the money to develop the tin mine 


The Saher-TusJc Walrus 


121 


which he and Lloyd had located, he had wheedled 
from her not only her insurance money hut all 
her business investments. 

“ 4 And now,’ she told me, ‘ he has only just 
come to me with the news that our mine is not 
of great value, hut that he thinks he can sell it 
to a large company which is able to handle low 
grade propositions, for enough to get hack for 
me the money he has invested for me, and per¬ 
haps a little more. He asked me to give him 
power of attorney to sell at any price.’ 

“ 6 You didn’t give it to him? ’ I said. 

“ 4 What else could I do? ’ she said. ‘ We 
are all penniless. ’ 

‘ i i Then you did! ’ I exclaimed, starting to my 
feet. 4 And he is doubtless a deep-dyed rascal, 
but I will get him. Give me power of attorney 
to wring his neck and I’ll get it. 

“ 1 I give you,’ she said, smiling through all 
her misfortune, 4 power to do whatever you 
think best.’ 

“ 6 You see,’ I told her, when I could speak 
more calmly, < this man Arnold has doubtless 
sunk a shaft where the outcropping of tin ore is 


122 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

strongest and has at last struck it rich. He used 
Lloyd to help him to discover it and your money 
to develop it. Now he will sell it for a fortune 
and give you a pittance; perhaps not as much 
as you have put into it. 

“ ‘ But he shan’t/ I said, striking the table. 
‘ He shall not! I will go to Alaska myself and 
look into the matter. Where is Arnold supposed 
to be at present? ’ 

“ i In Seattle,’ she told me. 

“ 6 Very well; he probably intends to take 
the first boat in the spring. I will defeat his 
end by going in over the trail.’ 

“ That,” the major said, settling back in his 
chair, “ is, as you know, exactly What I did; 
and here we are. However, we find our friend 
Arnold ahead of us. 

“ That doesn’t matter,” he exclaimed, sud¬ 
denly springing from his chair and pacing the 
floor. “ We’ll beat him yet. We’ll beat him! 
We’ll beat him! We will! We will! Jerry, 
the fire. Throw on some heavy logs and we’ll 
turn in for the night.” 

‘ ‘ Listen! ’ ’ whispered Byron. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 123 

As they all stood at solemn attention there 

came the faint tinkle of sleighbells. 

The major hastily turned the light low, then 

they all hurried to the window that faced the 

trail. To their surprise they saw that the 

storm had passed, the moon and stars were out 

and the white world about them gleamed away 

in the distance like a desert. 

The bells they had heard were worn by dogs. 

Two teams were passing. Racing along at a 

brisk trot, their drivers followed the sleds. 

They did not appear to take any notice of the 

cabin not a hundred vards from the trail. 

«/ 

“ White men,” said the major quietly. “ They 
hitch the dogs as we do: one ahead for leader, 
the rest by twos with a strong lead rope running 
between them back to the sled. Eskimos usually 

y 

hitch their dogs fan shape, each dog having his 
own draw rope running back to the sled. Be¬ 
sides, those fellows have a white man’s trot. 
It’s different from that of the Eskimo, though 
it would be difficult to analyze that difference.” 

When the teams had rounded the point and 
had disappeared in the direction of the Eskimo 


124 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

village, the major walked to a place by the fire. 
There he stood in a brown study for some time. 
At last he broke forth with the words: 

“ There’s some mischief in it, I’ll be bound.” 

“ In what? ” asked Jerry. 

“ Those two white men are up to some mean¬ 
ness or they wouldn’t have passed us up. There 
is no greater discourtesy in the Arctic than to 
pass a cabin inhabitated by a fellow white man 
without stopping for a cup of coffee. Those 
fellows have come a long way. They are hungry 
and tired. They could not have missed seeing 
the light of our window nor the smoke of our 
fire. They would not have passed us up if there 
had not been a reason for it. When you see 
white men going in the direction of an Eskimo 
village pass up a fellow white man’s cabin, you 
may pity the natives.” 

“ Why, what could they do! ” asked Jerry 
innocently enough. 

“ Think out the answer for yourself,” sug¬ 
gested the major. “ There are things enough 
they might do. The Eskimos are a childlike peo¬ 
ple and there are crimes enough that may be 


Tine Saber-Tusk Walrus 


125 


perpetrated upon such a helpless race.” 

Just what the thing was that those two dog- 
team drivers meant to do Jerry was to find out 
soon enough, and it was to draw him into a 
most astonishing fight. Knowing nothing of this, 
however, he replenished the fire, crept into his 
sleeping-hag and was soon dreaming of sailing a 
boundless sea in a cockleshell of a boat sur¬ 
rounded by many angry monsters of the deep. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE EARTH APPEARS TO SWALLOW SOMEONE 

“ Byron,” said the major next morning, “ our 
meat supply is getting extremely low. There 
used to be a great many ptarmigan on the moun¬ 
tain higher up, w T here there are still some frozen 
blueberries clinging to the vines. They call 
these birds ‘ mountain quail ’ down in the Rocky 
Mountains, and they are quite as good as quail 
ever dared to be. Suppose you take the shotgun 
and wander up that way. They are white at 
this time of the year, so watch close or you will 
miss them. 

“ Another thing,” added the major. “ The 
tin mine shaft I told you of last night has its 
entrance up there somewhere. Have one eye 
open for it. If you chance to come upon it 
you’ll save me some searching. I’d go with 
you but the monthly mail team will be going 

126 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 127 

down very soon, so I must get some letters 
written. ’’ 

Byron was glad of the opportunity to wander 
over the mountain. A bora explorer and a lover 
of rod and gun, he could find no more con¬ 
genial occupation. There were no polar bears 
on the mountain, he knew that. He would be 
safe enough, yet there always came to him a new 
thrill as he traveled over this all but unexplored 
wilderness, for he was always expecting to come 
upon some hitherto undiscovered gold mine, rich 
deposit of prehistoric ivory or some other 
treasure. 

When Byron had gone, Jerry said that he 
thought he would wander over to the Eskimo 
village and locate the exact spot at which the 
flight to the moon would take place. His glance 
as he said this involuntarily strayed to the fire 
extinguisher, but if the major saw any sign in 
this he was too shrewd a man to make any com¬ 
ment upon it. 

As Jerrv struck out over the trail alone, he 
was not thinking of the old witch-doctor’s prom¬ 
ised visit to the moon, but of jingling sleigh- 


128 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

bells and of the two men that passed in the 
night. 

44 Wonder what the major meant/’ he mum¬ 
bled. 44 What could those fellows do! ” 

When Byron left the cabin he struck straight 
away a distance of only a few hundred yards, to 
the foot of the mountain. Here he began climb¬ 
ing the mountain by circling it in a manner that 
brought him nearer and nearer the summit. 

He had reached a point halfway to the top 
when a sudden movement to his right caught and 
held his attention. He instantly lost sight of 
the object. Then another farther over flickered 
across the retina of his eye. 

44 That’s queer,” he said to himself. 

Almost involuntarily he cocked his gun. The 
next instant it snapped to his shoulder; there 
came a loud report, followed by a wild fluttering 
of wings. 

When the smoke had cleared awav, he saw 

7 

two objects thumping about on the snow. Quickly 
he sprang toward them. Two fine birds lay at 
his feet. The few brown spots on these ptarmi¬ 
gans, as they moved about, had caught his at- 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


129 


tention. He had fired almost at random and 
had killed two. 

As his eyes became more accustomed to the 
sport he was able to locate covey after covey 
and soon his bag was full. Not being the type 
of boy who kills merely for the sake of killing, 
and knowing that he had enough birds to satisfy 
their present needs, he was about to turn his 
steps downward toward the cabin when he 
thought of the major’s request that he keep an 
eye out for the entrance to the tin mine shaft. 

He decided to circle a little higher. 4 4 Any 
fresh digging would stand out like a beacon on 
these snowy wastes,” he told himself. 

Hardlv had he resumed the ascent than a dark 

%/ 

object to the right and above him attracted his 
attention. At first he thought it the mound of 
earth he sought. The next instant he was con¬ 
scious of the fact that it moved. His heart 
skipped a beat. Was it man or beast? At that 
distance he could not tell. Size depends on 
distance and in this wilderness it was impossible 
to judge distances. This creature might for 
all he knew be a black fox whose pelt was worth 


130 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

a thousand dollars, a skulking gray wolf that 
might have dangerous companions near by, a 
stray black bear which would be more than a 
match for a lone boy with a shotgun or it might 
be some human being. 

“ Might merely be an Eskimo hunting birds as 
I am. Probably is,” he told himself, 1 ‘ but I 
am going to see.” 

Fifteen minutes later he had established two 
facts: It was not a beast but a man; it was 
not a hunter, for he carried no gun. 

He was gradually closing in upon this stranger 
when, with a peculiar sliding hop, the man dis¬ 
appeared as completely as if the earth had swal¬ 
lowed him up. 

In the meantime Jerry had wended his way 
around Cape Prince of Wales Mountain, had 
climbed many a jagged pile of drift ice, had 
rounded an even more jagged pile of rock and 
had come out at last upon a broad, flat stretch 
of sandv beach. Part of this beach was cov- 
ered with ice and snow T ; the remainder was 
blown bare. In the foreground of this flat stood 
the government schoolhouse. Farther back, on 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


131 


the edge of the hill, were numerous poles and 
platforms. These he knew from his previous 
day’s visit were the hunting implements and 
caches of the natives. Their homes, buried deep 
beneath snow and sod, were marked by these 
poles and caches. 

Having got his bearings, he struck away down 
the beach toward a row of caches that stood 
among the sand dunes close to the sea. One 
of these he knew to be the home of Ne-pos-ok, the 
witch-doctor. 

As he came closer, he was delighted to see 
that a neat pile of wood had been placed on 
the beach before the doctor’s cabin. It was 
close to the edge of the broken ice that covered 
the surface of the conquered sea. 

“ Good,” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands to¬ 
gether. “ That pile wasn’t there yesterday. 
That’s to be the bonfire w r hich is to light his way 
to the moon. Perhaps,” he said more slowly, 
“ and then again perhaps not.” 

He circled the pile, then lost himself in the 
colony of upended ice cakes beyond. He walked 
as near as he could to the wood without seeing 


132 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

it at all, then dropping upon his knees, peered 
out from behind a cake of ice, measured the dis¬ 
tance to the wood pile with his eyes, then mut¬ 
tered : 

“ I wonder if it’ll do it. I believe it will. 
Ho, well, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t, that’s all. In 
life you take things as they are, not as you’d 
like them. You use what you get and make the 
best of it.” 

Then, like some general laying the plan of a 
campaign, he said to himself: i i The crowd of 
Eskimos will be there,” pointing to the sloping 
side of a sand dune which made an admirable 
amphitheater, “ the old witch-doctor will be be¬ 
hind that pile of wood and his smoke screen. I 
will be here, right where I am.” Lifting his 
hands he went through motions that were similar 
to a boy shooting a popgun, then threw back 
his head and laughed. 

“ The smoke,” he told himself, “ will hide 
me from the people and this cake of ice will hide 
me from the old witch-doctor. But supposing he 
charges over this way? Ho, well, then I suppose 
it is a matter of a game of hide-and-go-seek. I 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


133 


used to be good at that when I was in school.” 

At that he rose and taking a circuitous route 
among the ice piles that he might not be seen by 
any native, close to Ne-pos-ok’s wood pile he 
once more approached a row of pole sand caches 
which marked the location of many homes. 

“ Guess I’ll go into the cosgy,” he said to 
himself. “ There’s always something going on 
there: dance, jumping match, games, you can 
never tell what. Anyway, that’s what the major 
says.” 

The cosgy is the common workshop and dance 
hall of the village. Erected and maintained by 
all the people of the village, it is the common 
meeting-place of them all. Day or night, one 
may find groups of these natives, half-dressed or 
not dressed at all, engaged in the native pastime 
of dancing, singing or going through the wild 
gymnastic exercises which fit them so well for 
their active life of hunters on the treacherous 
ice floes. 

Had the boy known just what sort of game 
was going on in the cosgy at that moment and 
what violent exercises would be indulged in be- 


134 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

fore lie left the place, he might have hesitated 
before entering. Then, again, he might not 
have. You can never tell what a boy will do. 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE CHALLENGE 

When Byron saw the man on the side of 
the mountain drop from sight, his heart skipped 
a beat, but his feet did not falter; he pressed 
straight on. 

“ May be a sudden drop in the side of the 
mountain right there,” he told himself, “ then 
again it may be something else.” 

That he had discovered the very thing for 
which he was searching, he was not long in find¬ 
ing out, for, just as he dropped over a mound 
of earth thickly covered with snow, his lips 
parted in a low exclamation. Before him gaped 
a large hole in the earth. Since there was at the 
present moment no derrick nor other sign of 
man’s activity here, his mind at first suggested 
that here was the entrance to the home of some 
monster beast. The suggestion sent a shudder 
through his frame. The next instant his face 
was wreathed in a smile. 


135 


136 The Boys 7 Big Game Series 

“ It’s a mine,” he told himself, “ the major’s 
friend’s tin mine.” 

As he came close to the mouth he saw that 
the shaft had been sunk at an angle, not straight 
down, and that a pair of steel rails had been 
spiked across wobden ties and had been set on 
this slanting plane. That it would be possible 
for one to descend this track into the very heart 
of the mountain, he did not doubt. That the 
shaft was deep was testified to by the great 
mounds of earth which were piled along the 
lower side of the hole. 

“ And he went down there just now,” he told 
himself. “ Bet it is Ben Arnold himself. 
Bet—” He paused to consider. “Question 
is, am I going to follow? The answer,” he told 
himself a moment later, “ is ves.” 

Feeling in his pocket, he drew forth a small 
flashlight. Having made sure that it was in 
order, he gripped it tightly in one hand, bal¬ 
anced his gun in the other and began slowly 

dropping step by step into the black abyss below. 
##*#** 

The cosgy of the native village Jerry found 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


137 


to be much larger than the ordinary igloo. The 
room, which one reached by creeping along a 
narrow passageway that ran first between white 
walls of snow, then beneath the floor, was some 
twenty-five feet square. There was no door. 
One entered through a circular hole in the cen¬ 
ter of the floor. Through this hole Jerry popped 
his head, then slowly surveyed his surroundings. 

The room, in spite of the intense cold outside, 
was very warm. Six seal oil lamps arranged 
along three sides added their heat to the place, 

while the presence of twenty or more people 

* 

did much to raise the temperature. The men, 
stripped to the waist, w x ere dressed only in seal¬ 
skin trousers and low skin-boots. The five young 
women seated crosslegged on the floor and sew¬ 
ing at skin-boots as they chatted, were dressed 
in loose-flowing, bright-colored calico parkas, 
which showed every movement of their slender 
shoulders. 

In one corner some young Eskimos were per¬ 
forming most astonishing athletic feats. Jerry 
saw them stand in a row, then saw one man 
leap out to the center and kick out with both 


138 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

feet. To Jerry’s astonishment, he saw the fel¬ 
low’s two feet rise higher than his head, then 
saw them come down again in a graceful curve 
to the floor. 

‘‘ Wow! ” he mumbled, “ no need for athletic 
instructors here.” 

His attention was attracted at that moment 
by a muffled exclamation from another corner of 
the room. Following the sound with his eye he 
saw twelve or fifteen men closely packed in a 
circle. Sitting tailor fashion, squatting on their 
knees or standing with bodies bent forward, 
they appeared to be watching the actions of 
some persons in the center. The tense expres¬ 
sion on their bronze faces told him at once that 
something of unusual interest was going on over 
there. 

Putting his hands to the floor, he bolted up 
from the circular entrance, then walking across 
the floor chose a space in the circle where some 
veiy short spectators stood, pressed close to 
them and peered over their shoulders. 

What he saw astonished him. He had never 
heard of Eskimos playing cards. Yet here they 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


139 


were engaged in what appeared to be a most 
absorbing game played with those time-worn bits 
of pasteboard. 

“ Gambling too, I’ll be bound! ” he whispered 
as he saw a fine brace of red fox skins passed 
across the narrow circle. 

The next instant he experienced difficulty in 
suppressing an exclamation. The man who had 
received the fox skins was not an Eskimo, but a 
white man, and by his side sat another. 

“ The two who passed our cabin with dog 
teams in the night,” he told himself. “ I be¬ 
lieve I am beginning to see what the major sus¬ 
pected. Those fellows appear to have already 
collected a considerable pile of valuable skins by 
the gentle art of gambling, and I shouldn’t won¬ 
der if they are crooked gamblers at that. If 
they are, they are about the most low-lived dogs 
I’ve ever known, robbing a simple-minded, child¬ 
like people that way.” 

This question did not long remain unanswered. 
Not that he himself saw anything amiss, but 
events developed with startling rapidity that 
convinced him of the truth. 


140 The Boys* Big Game Series 

He had watched the game for ten minutes 
without making head or tail to it, as it was 
not like any game he had ever seen played; 
then, remembering a remark made by the major: 
“ Eskimos never do anything quite the way they 
are taught it by the white man,” he decided that 
this game was an invention of their own. 

Just at that moment there came the gruff but 
insistent tone of some man back of the players. 
It was the voice of some other white man whom 
Jerry had not as yet seen. 

“ Give ’em back,” said the voice. There was 
a tenseness in the tone, vet one felt that the 
speaker must be smiling as he said it. “ Give 
them fox skins back. That was a crooked hand. 
You took that ace out from up your sleeve.” 

The larger of the two white men turned with 
a twisted snarl on his lips as he demanded, 
“ Who said that? ” 

“ I did.” Jerry could not see the speaker, 
but felt that things were up and doing. Should 
he drop quickly through the hole, or should he 
stick? He decided to stick. There was a cer¬ 
tain gameness in the attitude of the one who had 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


141 


challenged the crook that stirred his admiration. 

“ Who are you? ” the crook demanded wrath- 

fully. 

“ Don’t matter nothin’ who I am.” 

“ What’s it to you? They’re not your fox 
skins. Come on, brother,” the man’s voice took 
on a wheedling tone, “ let’s be buddies. Don’t 
queer a fellow’s game.” 

“ That’s all right. That Eskimo’s going to 
need them fox skins fer to buy flour an’ sugar 
with before the break up, an’ I don’t aim to 
see ’em stole.” 

“ Stole! Did you say stole? ” The gambler’s 
face purpled. Wheeling suddenly, he struck 
straight out behind him. There was the sound 
of a terrific combat. The next instant the place 
seemed alive with whirling arms and legs, with 
screaming women and grunting men all crowding 
for the narrow hole in the floor. 

As for Jerrv, he crawled out of the mass of 
humanity to sidle off to a corner where he hoped 
to remain unmolested until the air should clear. 
In this he was doomed to disappointment. 


CHAPTER XV 


“ NOW I HAVE YOU ” 

The track down the mine shaft which Byron 
proposed to follow into the heart of the moun¬ 
tain was almost as steep as a ladder. The 
short ties which lay flat upon the earth were 
not over three inches in thickness. To make 
matters worse, the space above some of these 
was partly filled with earth. This offered but 
an uncertain footing. One slip and he might 
plunge to unknown depths below. Yet he dared 
not flash his light before him; the man ahead 
of him would see it at once. Whether the man 
would hide awav in some recess of the mine was 
more than Byron could guess. His great desire 
was to slip upon the man unobserved, and thus 
discover not only who he was but what he was 
doing. 

So, silently, he let himself down, step by step, 

142 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


143 


into the mine. That his descent might be as 
safe as possible, instead of sitting down and 
sliding from step to step, he turned himself 
face down. By clinging to the two steel rails 
with his hands and stepping with his toes from 
tie to tie, he was able to make fairly rapid 
progress. 

The place had the dull cold of a refrigeration 
plant. There were no mine props; no need of 
any. The walls of this mine shaft were frozen 
to the hardness of adamant. The only way the 
shaft could be sunk was bv the aid of a steam 
thawer. 

As the boy moved breathlessly downward, 
every moment held its threatened calamity. 
Here a bit of rock balanced by the side of the 
rail and loosened bv his hand all but went 
crashing into the dark depths below; now his 
right foot slipped and it was only by a super¬ 
human grip of hands on rails that he escaped 
broken bones and possible death, and now a 
black bat shooting, snapping away over his head 
brought a startled exclamation to his lips. 

However, he made progress. “ Deep old 


144 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

hole,” he told himself. “ Fool’s errand I’m on, 
I guess. Might better crawl back out and let the 
discovery of the mine stand for my day’s work.” 

He did not turn back, but dropped straight 
on down until, with a startling thud, his feet 
touched solid earth. 

Putting out first one foot, then the other, he 
described little semicircles to right and left of 
him. This he did that he might be sure that he 
had truly struck solid bottom. After that, let¬ 
ting go of the rails, he crouched low, attempt¬ 
ing to fathom the darkness. He might as well 
have tried gazing through the side of a battle¬ 
ship as to attempt to see an object in that place. 
One light glowed dully and far above him; that 
was the entrance to the mine. 

There came at last to his waiting ears a sound, 
a tap-tapping that stopped at intervals, then was 
taken up again. This sound did not appear to 
be in the room. It was as if it came through 
a solid wall. Dull, indistinct, almost inaudible at 
times, it seemed to him to come from almost 
anywhere on the mountain. Having no notion 
of the conveyance of sound through frozen earth, 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


145 


lie fancied it might even be Jerry or the major 
chopping wood back there by the cabin, but he 
could only guess. 

For five minutes he remained motionless. He 
was becoming chilled; his knees grew numb with 
cold; cramps set his feet aching. 

“ Wonder where he could be,” he told him¬ 
self. “ You’d think he’d have a light. The mine 
may be cut up into rooms, never can tell. Won¬ 
der if I dare turn on my torch. Might as well. 
I’ll freeze here without finding anything. Here 
goes.” 

His hand trembled as his finger touched the 
button. Came a flood of light making a yellow 
circle on the glistening wall of frozen earth. 
The circle made a complete round of the room, 
then came to rest in the spot at which it had 
started. 

“ Well,” said the boy in bewilderment, 
“ there’s no one here; nothing but earth and 
rocks. Wonder where he went to. Wonder— ” 

His wonderings were cut short by the renewing 
of that tap-tap-tap. This time it sounded far 
more distinctly. 


146 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ Can’t be outside,” he told himself. “ Must 
be inside somewhere, but where ? ” 

The only answer was another tap-tap-tap. 

“ Ghostly sound way down here in the earth. 
Like Poe’s raven,” he murmured, “ or like the 

spirit rapping at a spiritualist seance.” 

###### 

Jerry was red-headed, freckled and Irish. 
Needless to say, he had seen many a free-for-all 
fight and had frankly enjoyed them. At times 
when the wrong person, the unjust person, the 
cheat or bully seemed about to win, he had mixed 
in with a real joy. 

The fight that was going on before him on the 
floor of the cosgy interested him immensely. Not 
knowing how many helpers the man who had 
challenged the honesty of the two gamblers had, 
and knowing little concerning the justness of his 
accusation, he did not feel called upon to mix 
in. So he hovered excitedly about the edge of 
the combat, much as a referee might have done. 

At first the frightened natives were so much 
mixed up in the general tangle of legs and arms 
that it was impossible to tell just how many 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


147 


were actually engaged. Gradually, however, the 
situation cleared. Jerry was about to conclude 
that there were not more than three or four 
pairs of legs and arms left in the heap, when 
to his consternation he saw a hand raised high 
and in that hand an ugly-looking double-edged 
knife. 

All in a flash his senses told him that the 
slim, tapering fingers of that hand belonged to 
one of the gamblers; that this was not to be a 
fair fight but cold, brutal murder. 

The next instant he sprang forward. Seizing 
the arm as it stiffened for a downward thrust, 
he gave it such a shock as sent the knife crashing 
to the floor in a distant corner. This, however, 
was only the beginning. He was in the fight now. 
Whether he would or not, he was against the 
gamblers. Instinct told him that this was the 
just side; his wild Irish temper throbbing 
through his very being told him he would stick 
until death. 

Death it might be, too, for already the gam¬ 
bler, much older, stronger and more experienced 
than he, was turning his whole attention to the 


148 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

boy. Jerry’s bead came down with such a crash 
on the plank floor as might have knocked the 
senses from a less hardy boy. Not Jerry. 
Bouncing from the floor like a rubber ball, he 
struck out fiercely. First with right, then with 
left, he dealt the black scoundrel blow after blow. 

Bellowing like an enraged bull, the man rose 
upon his knees, stretched forth his long arms, 
and before the boy could spring back, embraced 
him and bore him once more crashing to the 
floor. This time his viselike grip did not relax. 
Throwing himself full upon the prostrate boy he 
snarled through bleeding lips: 

“ Now I have you, you little beast. I’ll kill 
vou! ” 

Crushing the breath out of him, all but caving 
in his ribs, he sat upon the boy’s chest while one 
long arm reached for the gleaming knife. 

Jerry knew what that move meant. Just 
where the knife lay he knew, too. He struggled 
madly but vainly to free himself. With sinking 
heart he felt the man’s hand moving toward the 
knife. Now it was two feet away; now but a 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


149 


foot. Now — ah, yes, there was a chance; he 
could not reach it. If he attempted to move, 
Jerry would throw him over and make good his 
escape. 


CHAPTER XVI 


HIDING IN THE SHADOWS 

After discovering that there was no one in 
the mine room which he had entered, Byron lis¬ 
tened for a moment to the strange tapping, then 
proceeded to examine the place. It was a low 
vaulted room some twenty feet across and 
roughly circular in shape. The dirt had been 
thawed before it was taken out. The frozen 
marks of the pick were still visible. Bits of 
shale and rocks were strewn about everywhere. 
Many of these the boy picked up and examined. 

“ Don’t look much like quartz to me,” he whis¬ 
pered. “ Just like any ordinary rock. Of course 
I don’t know much about mining, but there’s 
nothing here that resembles in the least way the 
black nuggets that the major showed us.” 

Having completed his survey, he was about to 
put his hand to the ladder-like track for his up- 

150 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


151 


ward climb, when he paused to think just what 
his position was. 

“ Here I am,” he told himself, “ a lone boy 
armed only with a clumsy shotgun, in a shaft 
which someone else has sunk into the heart of 
the mountain. A man went down here. I saw 
him. Where he is now I can’t tell. For all 1 
know, it was Ben Arnold himself. I think it was. 
How much does he know about me? Does he 
know that I am a friend of the major, who came 
eighteen hundred miles with a dog team for the 
express purpose of defeating him in any unjust 
deal that he might attempt to put through? If 
he knows this, what will he do if he sees me 
here and sees me before I see him? He might 
easily murder me and bury me in the frozen 
wall. No one would be the wiser. 

“ For all that,” he told himself with a sudden 
start, “ even if this is not Ben Arnold’s mine 
and the man who entered is not Ben but another 
man, I might be shot as an intruder.” 

Cold perspiration sprang out upon his brow at 
the thought. The next instant saw him with 
redoubled caution scaling the slanting track. 


152 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

He had climbed for perhaps thirty feet and 
was beginning to breathe more easily when his 
heart stopped beating as his ears caught a tap, 
tap, tap, below and to the right of him, and at 
almost the same instant his eyes caught the gleam 
of a light in the direction from which the sound 
came. 

“ Another mine shaft,” he breathed. “ He’s 
down there. That’s why I missed him.” 

Crowding back as far as he could into the 
shadows, looking, listening, waiting, not daring 
to move, scarcely breathing, he waited there in 
the dark, 

-V- V. ^ JL 

TP TV* iV TP "A* TP 

Just at the second when Jerry’s mind had 
abandoned all questions save that of his own 
part in releasing himself from the crushing 
weight on his chest, and of saving himself from 
sure death by the knife, the gambler gave a sud¬ 
den lunge to one side. So sudden was this move 
that Jerry was surprised into thinking he had 
been pushed. The next instant he realized his 
blunder. He had missed a possible opportunity 
for escape; the man had crowded him a short 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


153 


distance across the floor and now had clamped 
his knees down upon his chest more savagely 
than before. 

With a growl that was more like a beast’s 
than a man’s, he once more put out his hand. 

“ This time,” said Jerry to himself, as his 
heart heat like mad, “his arm is long enough. 
He will reach the knife, and then—” His 
heart grew faint at the thought of what must 
follow. 

He must have partly lost consciousness, for 
he heard, as in a dream, the labored breathing 
of two men who struggled for mastery, and knew, 
in a strange, dim sort of way, that this must be 
the other gambler and the man who had accused 
them. 

Then, all at once, full consciousness came to 
him and with it the will to struggle, to battle to 
the end, to die game. 

With a mighty effort he half rose from the 
floor. With every muscle strained, with back 
all but breaking and blood rushing to his head, 
he strove to throw off his assailant. 

“ No you don’t! ” the gambler growled. 


154 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

At that he pressed Jerry’s head to the floor 
with such a crash as caused the building to reel 
before him. At that same instant the boy caught 
above him the gleam of cold steel, knew it to be 
the knife and gave up hope. 

Then, at that same moment, a strange thing 
happened. As if suddenly struck by an auto¬ 
mobile or a trolley car, the gambler shot clear 
of him and went crashing to the floor some dis¬ 
tance bevond. 

Not realizing at all what had happened, the 
boy sat up and looked about. He saw an ex¬ 
ceedingly grave-faced Eskimo of slender build 
seize the gambler, whose knife had slipped from 
his hand, by his two feet and swing him about, 
fairly cracking his head off, then throw him 
head first through the hole in the floor. 

Having accomplished this, he sprang to the 
assistance of the white man, and a moment or 
two later, succeeded in landing the other gambler 
in that same hole. 

Having accomplished this, the native seized a 
walrus harpoon from the wall, adjusted its point, 
then sat himself gravely down by the hole with 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


155 


the harpoon carefully poised in his right hand. 

“ For all the world as if he were watching 
at a seal hole,” the boy smiled. “ And believe 
me, if one of those gamblers dared put his head 
up, he’d nail him! ” 

The place was in wild confusion. A hundred 
or more of valuable skins, white fox, red fox, 
cross fox, beaver, mink and marten, stakes in the 
broken-up game, lay strewn about the floor. 
Money there was, too, in abundance, silver dollars 
by the score, and a liberal sprinkling of gold 
pieces. 

A small Eskimo woman with an exceedingly 
wrinkled face crept from beneath a wooden seat 
where she had been hiding and began putting 
things to rights. She placed all the skins in a 
neat row on a bench, then piled the coins one 
upon another beside them. Whatever else of 
value there was scattered about she placed be¬ 
side these. When she came to the knife, her 
face became more wrinkled than before. With 
an ugly scowl, she left it wdiere it was. 

Jerry had sat watching her, but now he heard 
a gruff voice beside him: 


156 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

u That was game of yon, kid,” the man was 
saying. “ If it hadn’t been for you they’d have 
done me in.” 

The boy turned slowly to look into the other’s 
face. The next instant he experienced such a 
shock as he might had the floor suddenly risen 
beneath him and pitched him through the sky¬ 
light. The man who had spoken, the one whose 
life he had saved, was none other than Ben 

Arnold, the major’s hated enemy. 

****** 

There was only one thing of which Byron was 
certain as he stood there in the mine shaft shiv¬ 
ering, and that was that the man some twenty 
feet below him was Ben Arnold. 

The man with his back turned to the boy was 
stooped over, pecking away at some rocks with 
a very long, slender hammer. As pieces were 
broken off, he thrust them into a bag at his 
side. On his cap he wore a miner’s lamp. This 
gave the only light that illumined the space be¬ 
low. This weird illumination flickered from 
wall to wall, casting a ghostly gleam of light 
here, there and everywhere, bursting into shapes 



The Saber-Tush Walrus 


157 


that seemed a thousand bat-like spirits seeking 
resting places but finding none. 

As these thoughts sent an added chill up the 
boy’s spine, the man abruptly straightened up 
and looked up the shaft to the spot where the 
boy stood. But if the man had any idea that 
there was another person in the shaft besides 
himself he did not betray that fact by his actions, 
for after stretching his cramped muscles he re¬ 
sumed his picking. 

“ That’s what I heard when I was in the 
other shaft,” Byron told himself. “ It’s clear 
enough what has happened. The shaft I went 
down is an old one. They missed the ore there 
but found it here.” 

Of one thing he was now certain: The man 
w 7 as not Ben Arnold at all, but a much younger 
man. Perhaps twenty-eight years old, with a 
smooth-shaven face and frank brown eyes, he 
seemed the kind of chap Byron would like for an 
older brother. 

“ Well, that complicates matters,” he told 
himself. “ I wonder if this is the Arnold mine 
at all. If it is, what’s this fellow doing down 


158 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

here? Is he our friend or is he a foe? 

“ One thing’s sure,” he told himself; “ I don’t 
want to be seen down here. He wouldn’t attack 
me — isn’t that kind — but all the same, that 
would complicate matters. I’ll get out of here 
and report to the major.” 

At that, he began again his stealthy upward 
climb and, ere many minutes had elapsed, with 
a great degree of satisfaction he felt the keen, 
out-of-door Arctic air fan his cheek. 

Having regained possession of his bag of 
birds, he dropped his gun beneath his arm and 
struck down the hill for his cabin. 

“ Not so bad, after all,” he murmured. “ Not 
such a bad day’s work.” 


CHAPTER XVII 


PERPLEXING FRIENDSHIPS 

When Jerry looked at the man whose life he 
had saved and saw that it was Ben Arnold, he 
was speechless with surprise. 

Ben Arnold was holding out his hand. Jerry 
did not take it, first, because he was powerless 
to move, and second, when this spell had been 
shaken off, because he thought for a moment that 
it would be an act of disloyalty to his good 
friend, the major. 

Being Irish, Jerry’s first impulse was to give 
every man his due. This man, Ben Arnold, 
whatever his past might have been, had on this 
day behaved most nobly. He had challenged the 
fairness of men he knew to be criminals and 
crooks, desperate men who would stop at noth¬ 
ing. He had done this, not in his own behalf, 
but for those who were too simple-minded to 
know that they were being robbed. 

159 


160 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ Whatever liis past,’’ Jerry told himself, 
“ this is one glorified present.” 

At that he gripped the huge hand of the miner 
in a hearty embrace. 

The two of them stood there for a minute or 
two in confused silence. Then Jerry’s eyes 
strayed to the watchful waiting Eskimo, who still 
sat by the hole in the floor, his harpoon balanced 
for a stroke. As Ben Arnold saw him now for 
the first time, he laughed a hoarse laugh. 

“ That’s all right, Teragloona,” he said, ad¬ 
dressing the Eskimo. 

“ Teragloona! ” Jerry started and stared. 
Where had he heard that name before? 

“ That’s all right,” the miner repeated. 
“ They won’t come back again, them dirty crooks 
won’t. They had enough. Besides they’re 
cowards. Every dirty crook that walks the earth 
is a coward, every man-jack of ’em, so you don’t 
need to watch any more. I must say, though, 
you handled ’em neat, awful neat! ” 

He burst into a boisterous laugh as the picture 
of the sinewy Eskimo throwing the men head¬ 
foremost down the hole came back to him. 



The Saber-Tusk Walrus 161 

“You think muckie (dead)?” queried the 
Eskimo, wrinkling his brow. 

“ No, ” exclaimed Arnold, “ more’s the pity! 
Can’t kill a dog by throwing him a rod by his 
tail.” 

“ Wha — what did von say his name was? ” 
Jerry whispered, pointing to the Eskimo. 

“ Teragloona,” the miner whispered back. 

“ Ever have a son? ” 

“ One.” 

“ Lost him? ” 

“ Killed hunting walrus two years ago; fine 
lad he was.” 

“ Then he’s the one,” said Jerry emphatically, 
“ and I’m mighty glad of it, for he’s a brick, 
a clear-cut diamond without a flaw! ” 

“ He’s what? ” whispered the miner. 

Jerry pretended not to hear the question. 
“ Well,” he smiled, “ if the fight’s over for to¬ 
day, gue-ss I’ll amble back.” 

Stepping to the side of the room he picked up 
the knife that, but for the Eskimo, might at this 
moment have been buried in his own heart. 

“ Nice knife,” he said, with a sort of shudder. 


162 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ Real Sheffield steel, I’d say. If you fellows 
don’t mind, I’ll take it with me. Might come 
handy sometime.” 

“ You’re more than welcome to it,” said the 
miner. “ If you’d take a rough fellow’s sug¬ 
gestion, though, you’ll find a Wilson butcher knife 
more useful. All these Eskimos carry ’em. 
They’re awful handy for cutting up walrus meat, 
eh, Teragloona? Show the boy yours.” 

With all his white teeth gleaming in a smile, 
the Eskimo whipped a stout knife from beneath 
his parka. 

“ So, you see,” laughed Arnold, “ we didn’t 
use near all our cards this afternoon; not 
near all of ’em. It’s always better to avoid blood¬ 
shed when you can. People don’t always believe 
your story; not near always, they don’t.” 

Did this miner refer to his affairs with the 
major and his pal’s widow in this last remark? 
Something in the way he said it made Jerry 
think he might, but he could not be sure. 

“ Well, I’m off,” he said cheerily, as he put 
his hands to the sides of the hole and prepared 
to drop through. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


163 


“ I’ll go with you a step,” said Arnold. 
“ Guess they’ll leave you alone now, but you 
never can tell.” 

Once out on the beach the two tramped over 
the ice in silence. Just what the miner was 
thinking Jerry did not know. As for his own 
mind, it was filled with wildly confused thoughts. 
Uppermost of these was the hope that the miner 
would not accompany him to his own cabin door, 
for then, out of courtesy, he needs must invite 
him in. He would be forced to face the major, 
and that, of all things, he did not wish to have 
happen at the present moment. Most of all he 
wanted time alone and undisturbed to think 
things through. 

“ Life is so rotten strange,” he told himself. 
“You get all nicely settled in your mind you love 
this man and hate that one; this boy is brave and 
that one a coward; this girl is true and that one 
false; this man is kind and that one a brute. 
Then, all of a sudden, something comes up that 
turns everything topsv-turvy, and you haven’t 
the slightest notion where you’re at! ” 

He was lost in these reflections when the voice 


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cnce said to aim: ** If toil eat with a man. if 

m m 

you sleep with him in a deserted cat in. if yon 
drht bv Lis side in nils wild Arctic wilderness, 
be has a :nr claim cn 70nr rrien iship and 
dlelim than man~ a bloo*i relation down there 

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in :Le sleek, fat land of sunshine and n?wers." 

•• I’ve fought bv the side of Ben Arnold.** he 
told him sen* emphatically. 614 and when a re A 
show-dc wn ecmes. I m for ~ i n . In the meantime, 
I don't see that it*s at ail necessary for the major 
to know I Ye seen him. I’ll tell them of the 
drht. but the identity of the stranger who fought 
by my side shall be a profound secret. 









CHAPTER XVIII 


BAD NEWS FOR SABER-TUSK 

That evening, just as the snn was casting pur¬ 
ple shadows along the mountain-side and cutting 
the jagged ice piles into a million geometric 
figures of alternate purple and yellow, the two 
boys came out of their cabin. 

Dressed in mackinaws, as if for work, each boy 
carried in one hand a walrus harpoon and in the 
other a coil of rawhide rope. 

“ If Old Saber-Tusk is ever captured,’’ the 
major had said, “ it will be with the most an¬ 
cient of weapons, the harpoon. No single rifle 
shot will ever kill him, unless by some great 
good fortune a vital spot is reached, and that 
would not happen once in a hundred hits.” 

That was why the boys had been hunting seals 
with the harpoon. If they were to succeed with 
their chosen weapon, they must be able to throw 
it with accuracy and force. 

166 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


167 


“But no ordinary rawliide rope will hold 
him,” Byron had said to the major. 

“ That’s true; but we have some extraordinary 
rope. Teragloona has been saving it for this 
very purpose. It is cut from the hide of a tough 
old bull walrus and has been tanned in such a 
manner as will give it the maximum of strength. 
Though twice the thickness of ordinary harpoon 
rope, it is so flexible that much of its natural 
clumsiness has been removed. I believe that in 
a short time we may get to throwing it very well. 

“It is quite necessary that each one of us be 
able to throw the harpoon skillfully. There is 
no telling what may befall us on this hunt. Our 
head harpooner may be injured. We may be 
separated. I have an idea that it would be bet¬ 
ter if we do separate once we have sighted our 
prey.” 

“ Will we have more than one skin-boat? ” 
Jerry had asked. 

“ No.” 

“ Then how can we separate? ” 

“ Ice-pans,” smiled the major. “ There are 
sure to be some of these broad six-foot thick 


168 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

cakes of ice floating about in the water near us. 
If one could succeed in attracting the monster’s 
attention and tempt him to charge an ice-pan, 
he would have a great advantage. A skin-boat 
is easily torn up; a white man’s whaleboat may 
be stove in and sunk; but a large flat cake of ice 
is as indestructible as a gunboat. We could har¬ 
poon him from there with perfect safety.” 

“ But how would you hold him? ” Byron had 
asked. 

“ Simple enough.” The major brought a long 
shaft from the corner. The boys, who had not 
seen it before, examined it with as much interest 
as they had the harpoons that night back there 
in Bear Canyon Inn. 

“ What do you call it? ” Jerry asked at last. 

“ A lance, modeled after the lances used by 
the primitive Eskimos north of Canada. The 
main difference is that the long tapering point 
on theirs is made of copper. Mine is made of 
steel, which is better. Those people actually kill 
a walrus or polar bear with no other weapons 
than a lance and harpoon. 

“My idea is not to use this as a weapon, but 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


169 


as a means of holding the rope. Once you have 
harpooned a walrus, you drive this lance into 
the ice, then wrap the rope about it close to the 
ice. You hold the lance upright. This gives you 
a tremendous leverage. If your lance-point 
holds, I doubt if even the king of walrus, or a 
walrus-dog himself, could escape. And, in the 
meantime, while the lance holds, many a telling 
shot may be poured broadside into the struggling 
beast by the lancer’s companion.” 

Since all of this seemed based on sound judg¬ 
ment, the boys had been spending some time each 
day in harpoon practice. At times they hunted 
seals, at others they marked an oval figure on 
the side of a sloping snowbank and, pretending 
that the oval space was the side of a walrus, 
punctured the snowbank again and again. 

So proficient had they become that out of a 
hundred throws made at a distance of twenty 
feet, they seldom had more than one or two 
misses. 

To-night, as they limbered up their muscles, 
they suddenly found the major standing beside 
them. 


170 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ Fine business, boys! ” he exclaimed heartily. 
“ You have made splendid progress. There is 
need of it, too. I’ve just been out over the free 
ice. It is tossing restlessly, apparently eager to 
be away. The barometer is low to-night. I look 
for a wild blow from the south. If we get it, the 
Straits will clear. After that, it’s not likely to 
be long before we launch our boat for the great 
quest.’ ’ 

“ How about Teragloona? ” asked Byron. 

“ Saw him over at the village to-day.” 

Jerry shot the major a quick glance. Had he 
seen Teragloona after the fight, and had he told 
all? If the major knew anything of the affair 
in the cosgy, he did not show it by motion of 
eye, lip or hand. 

“ But then he wouldn’t,” Jerry told himself. 
“ The major is master of his muscles, just as 
every successful man is.” 

“ Teragloona is eager for the try-out,” the 
major went on. “ He’s got three trusty fellows 
who’ll dare the adventure with us. We may be 
able to pick up one or two others. If not, we’ll 
go as we are. Seen (anything of your young 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


171 


Eskimo? ” he asked, turning to face Byron. 

“ No — not yet. You see,” said the hoy, “ he 
told me he was in hiding. Wouldn’t do to visit 
him in the daytime. I’m going over there to¬ 
night. ’ ’ 

44 And I,” said Jerry, “ am going to witness 
the old witch-doctor’s grand balloon spirit ascen¬ 
sion to the moon. Wouldn’t miss it for the world. 
Unless I miss my guess, it’s going to be a very 
unusual affair. Maybe a surprise to the old doc¬ 
tor himself.” He let out a chuckle that caused 
the major to turn and stare at him. 

“ Whatever you do, son,” he said soberly, 
“ don’t take any chances. Remember we need 
you on this hunt, and those old fake-doctors, once 
aroused, are mean as a she-wolf with pups.” 

“ I’ll be careful,” said Jerry, as he poised his 
harpoon for a throw. 

“ Grip the handles a little more firmly. Be 
sure your thumb is exactly against the knob,” 
counseled the major. “ Make your throw straight 
away and as near as can be perpendicular to the 
side of your prey. That’s the way to avoid a 
miss by a glancing blow.” 


172 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ Are we to have rabbit or seal-heart for sup¬ 
per? ” Jerry asked hungrily. 

“ Neither ,’ 9 smiled the major. “A native 
from up the coast brought down a sled-load of 
fish — white fish — and Teragloona got me three. 
They’re prime.” 

“ Fine stuff! ” exclaimed Jerry. “ On that I 
think I’m good for a dozen more throws.” He 
hurled his shaft with such force as all but buried 
it in the snowbank. 

“ Don’t overdo it,” smiled the major. “ A 
harpoon’s as bad as a baseball. Don’t want any 
glass arms in our outfit, so take good care of 
your old soup-bone.” 

At that he turned toward the cabin, leaving 
the boys to finish their practice. 

“ I wonder if he knows,” Jerry whispered, as 
he followed him with his eye. “ If he does, I 
wonder what he thinks.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


A SURPRISE 

“ I scarcely know what to make of it,” said 
the major, as Byron related his experience in the 
tin mine shaft. “ You’ve discovered the location 
beyond a doubt. There’s been no other shaft 
sunk to the depth of the one you were in. But 
who is this young man who comes gathering 
samples from it? He is an entire surprise to me, 
an unknown quantity. We must look into it. I’ll 
go up there first thing in the morning. I may 
find him there, and if I do, I’ll find out his busi¬ 
ness pronto. I’ve been entrusted with the man¬ 
aging of a half interest in that property and 
have a right to know what is going on there.” 

Both Byron and the major expressed consid¬ 
erable interest and no little surprise when Jerry 
related his hairbreadth escape in the native 
dance hall. 

“ So that was their game! ” exclaimed the 

173 


174 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

major, as Jerry told of tlie crooked gambling. 
“ I knew there was something; there always is. ’ ? 

“ See! ” said Jerry, “ here’s the knife! ” 

“ The knife! ” exclaimed Byron. 

44 The one that barely missed finding my 
heart! ” 

“ What yon going to do with it? ” asked Byron 
with a shiver. 

i i Going to make a sheath for it and carry it. 
It’ll bring me good luck.” 

Had Jerry been able to turn the pages of life 
ahead a bit and looked into the future, he would 
have seen things written there that would have 
made him willing, if such a thing were possible, 
to give the knife a sheath of gold. 

Neither Byron nor the major asked any ques¬ 
tions regarding the identity of the stranger who 
had broken up the card game. If the major 
guessed it to have been Ben Arnold, he did not 
say so. As for Byron, the matter very likely 
escaped his attention. 

After a greatly relished meal of fish, red 
beans and native sour berries, the two boys 
prepared to go out. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


175 


A short time later, as they parted at the beach 
trail, Byron carried over his shoulder the gar¬ 
ments loaned to him by the young Eskimo and, 
as a special gift to the Eskimo girl, a small sack 
of sugar. 

As for Jerry, he wore the recently acquired 
knife in a rather bravado manner, tucked under 
the belt of a bright yellow mackinaw. Gleaming 
in the light, the knife seemed to Byron a single 
wicked winking eye telling of bloody adventures 
yet to come. 

Beneath his mackinaw Jerry carried some ob¬ 
ject which made his mackinaw bulge conspic¬ 
uously over his right hip. 

“ Be good,” said Jerry. 

“ Be careful,” was Byron’s laughing response 
as they parted. 

As Byron tramped along in the moonlight, he 
thought of many things. He wondered if he 
would be able to find the young Eskimo’s den. 
He had not marked the spot very well in his mind. 
He knew there were three jagged ice piles to the 
right of the trail at this point and one to the left; 
that was about all. If he found the place, would 


176 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

the Eskimo and the girl be there? If they were 
there, how would he be received? Would he learn 
more of their secret? Would he be told who was 
hunting them? He meant to ask the boy to go 
along with the hunting party, as an oarsman, and 
the girl as a cook. Would they go? If they went, 
if Teragloona went and all the rest of them, how 
would they fare in their hunting? Would they 
come up with Old Saber-Tusk? Would they bag 
him, or would they suffer loss at his hand? It 
was a perilous task, but he found himself eager 
to be about it. 

What of the major’s problem? Who was this 
new stranger? Would the major find him, and 
would he learn his business? Would he turn out 
friend or foe? Was there really a rich deposit 
of tin ore in the mountain? If so, who would at 
the end gain possession of it? Byron hoped the 
major might, for nothing could please him more 
than to see success come to one who worked un¬ 
selfishly for the good of others. 

With these and many more reflections he be¬ 
guiled the time of his five-mile tramp. As he 
came close to the spot where the hidden den lay 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


177 


away in the sand dunes, he dismissed all other 
thoughts but those pertaining to his present mis¬ 
sion, and began keeping a sharp watch to right 
and left, before and behind him. 

“ For,” he told himself, “ I must not be seen 
entering the place. For the safety of my friend, 
I must not.” 

As for Jerry, he made his way light-heartedly 
around the mountain. When he had reached the 
beach before the village he did not follow it, but, 
turning to the left, soon lost himself to sight 
among the moonlit ice piles. 

9 

Having gone a half mile in a direction parallel 
to the beach, he once more faced toward the vil¬ 
lage, walked straight toward it for a few yards, 
then, bending down, went scooting like a shadow 
from ice pile to ice pile, until he had reached his 
objective; a huge upended ice cake not far from 
the village and scarcely ten yards from a great 
circular pile of wood that loomed up black in 
the moonlight. 

“ The stage is set,” he murmured. “ All that 
is needed are the actors and the audience. As 
for me, I think I might be known as a property- 



178 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

man. All right, Mr. Property-man, make your¬ 
self comfortable until the show begins.” 

Drawing a square of deerskin from beneath 
his arm, he spread it upon the ice and sat down 
upon it, then gave himself over to the contempla¬ 
tion of things, past, present and to come. 
****** 

The major, who had settled down comfortably 
by the fire, and was enjoying for the twentieth 
time Charles Dickens’ story of “ Oliver Twist ” 
was destined for something of a surprise that 
night. 

Hardly had he buried his thoughts deep in the 
book’s pages before there came a loud stamping 
in the hall. 

“ What,” he exclaimed, starting up and fling¬ 
ing fresh wood on the fire, “ one of the boys back 
already! Didn’t expect them for at least an 
hour.” 

But what was this ? There came a loud knock¬ 
ing at the inner door. The major leaped from his 
chair. A visitor in such a place as this, and at 
this time of night! It was quite unusual. 

“ Come in! ” he shouted. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


179 


The door flew open and in stepped a tall man 
whose face was covered by the hood of a reindeer 
parka. 

“ Mighty unhandy affairs,” said the stranger 
as he struggled with the hood. “ Comfortable, 
though . 9 9 

The next instant his face appeared, and the 
exact instant after that the major was gripping 
his hand and shouting, “ Charles Markham, you 
old rascal! What a delightful surprise! ” 

“ Thought you might like to see me,” smiled 
the young man. “ Heard you were up this way, 
so I decided to look you up.” 

A fresh plate of fish, coffee and beans, with 
sour berries, was in order, and after that a smoke 
by the fire. 

“ But what brings you to the Cape! ” asked 
the major. 

‘ i A little mining matter — tin mine. Company 
asked me to look into some property they were 
thinking of purchasing up here. After I left the 
army I went in for metallurgy. And you? ” 

“ Oh, as for me,” laughed the major, “ I am 
still just adventuring. Never have really gone in 


180 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

for anything. This time it is to be a grand wal¬ 
rus hunt for Old Saber-Tusk himself. Ever hear 
of him? ” 

“ Can’t say I have.” 

“ Interesting fellow. He has regular sabers 
for tusks — sharpens ’em on rocks. Latest I’ve 
heard is he’s a man-eating walrus; only specimen 
ever known.” 

“ No! ” 

“ Yes, sir! Native told me that to-day. Says 
he was seen devouring a man. Strange part is, 
a hunter did disappear that very day. Probably 
the man drifted off on an ice cake and was lost. 
Walrus was eating a seal; they get one now and 
then. No Eskimo ever would get close enough 
to Old Saber-Tusk to be able to tell whether he 
was eating a seal or a man. Bad enough old 
fellow, at that; has wrecked a half-dozen boats 
and drowned at least that many Eskimos. So 
you see, we are really after something. But 
this mine? ” He turned the subject suddenly. 
“ Is there a man named Arnold interested in 
it? ” 

“ I believe he’s the man who has the sale of 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


181 


it,” smiled Markham. “ I’ve got nothing to do 
with that, though; I’m merely to gather samples 
and test them, to find out as near as I can the 
value of the claim. My principals will be up on 
the first schooner after the break-up and close 
the deal. So you see I have considerable time 
on my hands. How’d you like to let me in on 
this little hunt of yours? ” 

“ Nothing would suit me better! ” exclaimed 
the major. “ We need another man or two, and 
I could not ask for a braver man than my old 
friend, Private Charles Markham!” 

“ It’s agreed, then! ” cried young Markham, 
gripping his hand. ‘ 1 I’ll keep tab on you and 
when the appointed day arrives, I’ll be there! ” 
After that their conversation drifted to other 
scenes and other days, the days and scenes of 
their earlier army life. Nothing further had been 
said of the mine when, an hour later, young Mark¬ 
ham rose and declared that he must get back to 
his shack and between the deerskins. 


CHAPTER XX 


THE DEATH THREAT 

After Charles Markham had left the cabin, the 
major did not at once take up the book that tells 
of the many misfortunes that befell poor Oliver 
Twist. He had too many present and real prob¬ 
lems to consider. 

“ So Markham’s on the job,” he murmured, 
rising and pacing slowly back and forth before the 
fire. “ Well, I’m glad of that. He’s a fine, manly, 
honest fellow. If a man’s to oppose me, I like 
him to be honest. There’s just one question I’d 
like to ask him when lie’s finished his survey of 
the property and has examined the specimens. 
I’d like to say to him: i Charles, how does the 
thing stand! How much are you going to offer? 
Is the mine worth five thousand dollars or a quar¬ 
ter of a million? ’ 

“ But that,” he said slowly, shaking his fist at 
the grinning caribou skull in the corner of the 

182 



The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


183 


roof, “ is exactly what I can't ask him. He was 
sent here by a company. That company is pay¬ 
ing him well for securing some valuable infor¬ 
mation. If he gave that information to me, he 
would be betraying a trust, and that is one thing 
a man cannot ask another to do. So, you old 
caribou skull, who have witnessed many a strange 
scene, you will never have the privilege of hear¬ 
ing me ask Charlie Markham that question/' 

After he had finished this speech, he stood 
staring at the caribou skull. Strangely enough, 
as he stood there all alone in that cabin, that was 
haunted by so much unwritten history, he experi¬ 
enced a feeling of lively interest in that shell of 
bone and that pair of wide-spreading antlers. 
He thought of Jagger's gold, and felt for an 
instant that caribou skull was the key to the 
secret of the hidden gold. 

So intense was this feeling that he found him¬ 
self dragging the heavy table from the center of 
the room. A chair resting on this table would 
enable him to reach the skull. 

He had the table halfway across the room when 
he suddenly paused and with a loud laugh said 


184 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

something about fairy stories. After this un¬ 
usual procedure, he pushed the table back to its 
place, stirred up the fire, dropped into the chair, 
took up his book and was soon busily engaged 
in the business of getting Oliver Twist out of the 
clutches of Fagin, the Jew. 

-y. ot, x -.V- .V- 

*7v* Tp TP w *71" Tv 

Matters moved rather slowly for Jerry. Things 
did not happen. He thought out all the affairs 
that needed thinking out. He shifted from his 
knees to his feet, then sat down. He studied the 
Big Dipper, and having located the North Star, 
marveled at the fact that it was almost directly 
over his head. Having done all these things, he 
shivered with cold and was about to give up all 
hopes of seeing the spirit flight to the moon, when 
his ear caught in the distance a strange humming. 

“ I — I — am — am — ah — ah — ah — I — am 
— ah — ah — ah — ah! ’ ’ 

It rose and fell like the rise and fall of waves 
beating on the shore. 

It was now joined in by a drum. Another drum, 
more singers, still more drums, women singers, 
more drums, swelled the chant until it had ail the 


\ 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 185 

force and effect of a fifty-piece orchestra assisted 
by a chorus. 

Heard in the open night it was wild, weird, 
fascinating. It sent strange sensations racing up 
the boy’s spine and made him forget that he was 
cold, and all but forget that he was in hiding. 
In his wild desire to see the drummers and the 
singers, he was about to race out to meet them, 
when he suddenly sank back in his place. 

‘ 6 The show, ’ ’ he whispered to himself, striving 
to still his wildly beating heart, “ is about to be¬ 
gin. The audience will be there; the musicians 
over there; the witch-doctor there; and I, the 
property-man, will be here. I only hope the chief 
actor will be pleased with the part played by 
the property-man. I’m fearfully afraid he 
won’t.” 

He chuckled at this, then drew from beneath 
his parka a thing of shining brass, the fire ex¬ 
tinguisher. 

In the meantime the followers of old Ne-pos-ok, 
drumming and singing as they marched, were 
making their way toward the spot where the weird 
performance was to be given. 


186 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

“Wonder how many there are,” Jerry asked 
himself. “ Seems like quite a crowd. Lots of 
the natives don’t believe in Ne-pos-ok. None of 
our men do. Teragloona, the brave man, doesn’t. 
None of the Eskimos should. He’s a fake. More 
than that, he’s dangerous, so the major says. 
When a native is sick, he tells him not to take 
medicine but to have faith in his wild incanta¬ 
tions and he’ll carry him through. Lots of times 
the natives die when they could he saved. Oh, 
well, as far as that goes, there are a few thousand 
white-man witch-doctors down in the States who 
are as bad. But here’s one night when one 
Eskimo and his followers get a surprise! ” He 
patted the fire extinguisher, then hugged him¬ 
self in high glee. 

The procession, led by the witch-doctor him¬ 
self, w r as composed of ten drummers, some fifty 
singers, and as many other persons who had no 
part in the performance. They were led to the 
shelving bank. When they were all seated, the 
music cased and the old doctor began: 

‘ * TTbogob — conok. ’ ’ 

This much of his speech Jerry could under- 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 187 

stand. It meant, “ Look! Here is something 
that may interest you! 99 

Beyond this point he could not understand a 
word. But that it was an interesting speech made 
by Ne-pos-ok was testified to by the numerous 
“ Ke-ke’s,” “ Mat-na’s,” and “ Ah-ne-ca , s, ,, 
that burst from the throats of his admirers. 

When he had finished, he walked slowly back 
to the wood-pile, circled it, entered by the narrow 
opening behind, then shouted a single word: 

“ Ke-ke! ” (Go ahead.) 

Immediately, three young men, lighting torches 
as they came, darted forward. 

“ Oh! 99 breathed Jerry. “ Now the show be¬ 
gins! 99 

As if afraid the thing would explode, he 
grasped the fire extinguisher firmly. 

Almost instantly there burst from the circle of 
wood a dense black smoke which was cut through 
here and there by vivid flashes of flames. 

These flames lighted up the marble-like ice 
piles in a way that made them ten times more 
specterlike than in the pale moonlight, while the 
black shadow of the smoke trailing away out over 


188 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

tlie sea seemed some vast dragon, large enough 
and fierce enough to swallow all the human in¬ 
habitants of the world. 

For a moment the boy’s heart failed him. 
After all, it was but a prank; why go through 
with it? Why not see the show through, then 
sneak away home behind the ice piles? 

This feeling left him the next moment, for to 
his ears came the droning voice of the witch¬ 
doctor: 

Now I am growing light; I am light as the 
duck that floats on the water.” 

Jerry thought of the little children who had 
perished because Ne-pos-ok had advised their 
parents to give them no medicine, and his heart 
turned cold as steel as he gripped the handle of 
the fire extinguisher and awaited eagerly the 
cue that was to tell the property-man to do 
his bit. 

“ Now I am light as the seagull that floats on 
the air,” droned the doctor. 

Jerry moved to a place where he could see the 
entrance to the wood-pile. 

“ Now I am light as a feather.” 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


189 


The fire seemed to bum with a fresh fierceness. 

The doctor appeared to hasten. “Now I am 
light as a snowflake.” 

Jerry gave the handle of the fire extinguisher 
a twist. There came from its nozzle an angry 
ziz-z. 

‘ ‘ She works,’ 9 he whispered tensely. His knees 
trembled; his lips moved as if in palsy, but he 
was game. 

Then came the cue: “I go up — up — up — 99 

Jerry had given a certain deft turn to the han¬ 
dle. A whitish stream shot out and up. He 
raised the nozzle, then lowered it a trifle. The 
streamed played on the fire. A corner of the fire 
went suddenly black. The black spot widened, 
widened, widened. 

There came the patter of padded footsteps. 
It was the doctor. Leaping from the center of 
the fast-darkening fire, instead of sneaking 
silently away in the ice piles till sunrise, he was 
thrown into full view of the audience. 

There came a wild screaming gasp from the 
multitude as they saw their idol, who was sup¬ 
posed to be soaring away on the wings of a cloud 


190 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

bound for the moon, miserably sneaking away to 
the ice piles to hide his shame. 

The next instant Jerry had business on his 
hands. The doctor, having caught sight of him, 
and having guessed the cause of his disgrace, 
dashed at him, brandishing a keen-edged knife, 
and screaming between tight-set teeth: 

“ I keel you! I keel you! ” 


CHAPTER XXI 


A HURDLE-RACE IN THE NIGHT 

Byron had less trouble locating the home of his 
friend, the fugitive Eskimo, than he had antici¬ 
pated, for, having come near to the place, he hit 
upon the scheme of leaving the beach and walk¬ 
ing upon the crests of the sand dunes. These, 
lying away from the beach as they did, like a suc¬ 
cession of snowbanks piled up behind a board 
fence, gave him many a sudden slide and many a 
short upward climb. In good time, however, his 
eyes caught sight of the thing he sought: the 
yellow square of light glowing up from the crest 
of a mound. 

Letting himself down into the first little room, 
he crept along the narrow passageway, thrust his 
head into the entrance of the main room, and 
said: 

“ Hello! ” 

He got no answer. But as his eyes became ac- 

191 


192 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

customed to the light he made out the form of 
the Eskimo girl. Seated upon the broad bed-shelf 
at the other side of the room, with deerskins 
tumbled loosely at her feet, she stretched her 
arms, yawned and stared at the boy as if she had 
been asleep, which she probably had. 

The next moment, with a lithe movement of 
her body, she sprang from her seat and began 
busying herself at replenishing the oil in the seal- 
oil lamps and trimming the moss-wicks along the 
sides. 

When these blazed up brightly she brought two 
deerskins to the brightest lamp, then having 
seated herself cross-legged upon one of the skins, 
motioned Byron to a seat on the other. 

After that, because she evidently did not know 
a word of English, and because he knew no more 
than a half-dozen words of her language they sat 
silently staring at the fire. 

Once she turned, and patting his feet, smiled 
up at him. 

He, supposing that she was trying to tell him 
that she remembered doctoring his frozen feet, 
smiled back at her. 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


193 


Truth is, the patting of another’s feet is the 
Eskimo’s way of showing love for the owner of 
the feet. Just what was in the dusky maiden’s 
mind at that moment would be difficult to say, but 
to Byron, who was wholly ignorant of Eskimo 
ways, it mattered not what she thought. 

The truth was, he was busy with his own 
thoughts. He had fallen into a sort of reverie in 
which he saw himself, not a white boy but a 
young Eskimo hunter. Long before break of day 
he saw himself setting a sealskin sack horizon¬ 
tally upon his shoulders and placing across it a 
harpoon and rifle. In the sack of ammunition, 
a spare pair of deerskin sacks and skin-boots, 
also a few odds and ends of hunting equipment. 

He saw himself wander out over the treacher¬ 
ous ice floes in the moonlight. He sighted a polar 
bear but lost him. He sat silently for an hour by 
a pool of black water, but no seal came up to the 
surface. 

He wandered far out over the floes. Just as he 
was about to turn back empty-handed, he sighted 
a great bearded seal asleep on the ice. An hour 
of stalking and he lifted his rifle for a shot. 


194 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

After that there was an exciting moment in 
which he raced to the spot to prevent the seal 
from slipping into the water, and having suc¬ 
ceeded in saving him, severed his head from his 
body. 

Because this great seal weighed hundreds of 
pounds, he dragged only a part of the meat and 
the skin home. 

Arrived at the den in the midst of the sand 
dunes, he told the story of the hunt to a little 
brown girl. As a reward she gave him food and 
tea, stroking and patting his tired feet as he ate 
a much relished meal. 

Then he sat by the seal-oil lamp until the 
drowsy warmth overcome him, and creeping into 
the warm depth of many deerskins, he slept the 
dreamless sleep of the hunter of the North who 
feels few sorrows and knows no fear. 

“ Not so bad,” he told himself, as he awakened 
from this daydream. “ Not half bad.” 

The lamps had warmed the room. His head 

was nodding. He could scarcely tell whether he 

/ 

was still sitting on the deerskin, or was buried 
beneath many skins on the bed-shelf, when there 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


195 


came a quick loud thump from without that 
startled him into wakefulness. 

It was as if his friend, the young Eskimo, hav¬ 
ing arrived home from a hunt, had inadvertently 
fallen headforemost down from the sand dunes 
to the floor of the outer room. 

With a startled exclamation, he sprang to his 
feet. Then, noting that the girl had not arisen, 
and that she w^as smiling reassuringly at him, he 
sank back on the deerskin to await developments. 

.y. m . .y. 

7? ‘TV* "a* 7r 

To say that Jerry sprang from his place of hid¬ 
ing and leaped away into the shadows at sound 
of the witch-doctor’s yell, “ I keel you! I keel 
you! ’ ’ would express it mildly. He literally flew. 

He had no desire to mix with the enraged 
Eskimo. True, there was the knife at his belt, but 
the doctor was much older and had far more ex¬ 
perience in knife battles. The fight, if fight they 
must, might end disastrously. Besides, he had 
no relish for bloodshed, no matter who shed it. 

Leaping silently into the shadow of an ice pile, 
he raced away toward the sea, then, turning sud¬ 
denly, he shot away to the left. 


196 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

The Eskimo was a swift runner and a shrewd 
follower. His ancestors had not dogged the 
tracks of polar bears on this same ice field for 
naught. He was not to be shaken off. 

The boy, dodging from shadow to shadow, 
turned first to right, then to left, doubled back, 
sprinted straight away, but always there came 
that pit-pat of hurrying feet and the dark bulk of 
an infuriated native. 

Breathing hard, perspiring at every pore, be¬ 
wildered, all but outdone, the boy sought in vain 
for a way of escape. 

He could of course lead the man to their cabin 
and dart inside. That would save him, but this 
was the last thing he wished to do. He did not 
wish to have the Eskimo know who he was; he 
had worn the yellow mackinaw, which was not 
his own, for this very reason. 

“ What a mess! ” he panted. “ No, I don’t 
wish I hadn’t done it. The old fake deserved it. 
And if it was only a fist affair, I’d stop and take 
a chance of giving him a good beating up. But 
knives! Oh, boy! ” 

When Jerry found himself in a comer, he al- 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


197 


ways went through his bag of tricks to discover, 
if possible, one that would get him out of his 
trouble. He had thought he was some nobby 
little racer. But, after leaping countless upended 
ice cakes and pressure ridges, after dodging this 
way and that for what seemed an endless space 
of time, he was no safer than in the beginning. 
This trick had utterly failed him. 

There was one other stunt for which he had 
been famous at school, the running broad jump. 

‘‘ But how can I use that here ? * ’ he asked him¬ 
self. 

A few minutes later the answer came. 

He turned directly to the right, away from the 
shore. He then slowed down somewhat, as if 
fatigued and about to give up. Truth was, he 
was hoarding his little remaining strength for a 
supreme effort. 

He expected the Eskimo to close the gap that 
lay between them. In this the doctor came up 
to expectations nobly. Now he had gained twenty 
yards, now forty, now sixty. And now the boy 
could catch the sound of his hoarse and labored 
breathing. 


198 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

u Like the panting of a mad wolf, which he 
is,” Jerry thought. 

Suddenly, as he sped on, he saw just before him 
a stretch of black water. Not hesitating for a 
second, instead, redoubling his speed, he reached 
the very brink of the chasm, then rising like a 
bird, went sailing through space. 

There followed an agonizing instant. The 
water beneath him was stinging, freezing cold. 
The thermometer stood at forty below. To plunge 
into the water was almost sure death. Would 
he make it? Would he — 

Yes, his feet touched solid ice. He stumbled 
and all but fell back, then, throwing himself for¬ 
ward in one last supreme effect, he fell flat upon 
the ice beyond. 

At that time through his mind there flashed a 
sentence: “ Between me and thee there is a great 
gap fixed.” 

It was quite true. The ice on which Jerry 
rested was drifting slowly toward the North Pole; 
that on which the witch-doctor stood was solidly 
attached to the shore. This narrow ribbon of 
dark water extended for many miles. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


199 


“ He can follow it all day and all night and 
find no crossing,’’ grinned Jerry. “ It’s as wide 
at one place as it is at all others. And he can’t 
jump it. I’ll swear he can’t. I doubt if I could 
under ordinary circumstances myself.” 

Just then there entered his mind a disturbing 
question. “ Without a man and a knife behind 
me, I wonder if I can do it myself; and if I can’t, 
how am I ever to get back to the shore ice and 
our cabin? ” 


CHAPTER XXII 


STRATEGY 

The sudden thud which Byron had heard at the 
entrance of the Eskimo’s hiding-place was not 
caused by someone falling through the hole in the 
top, but by a heavy frozen bundle of polar bear 
skin thrown from above. The young hunter had 
left this part of the bear which he and Byron 
had captured two nights before, to the last, and 
was now returning home with it. 

He came crawling into the main room, a minute 
or two later, dragging the skin after him. 

He smiled with pleasure at sight of Byron, and 
at once rolled the skin over with the head on top, 
so the boy could see what a monster it was. 

Byron placed his hands side by side and thus 
made a rough guess at the distance between the 
ears. 

“ Sixteen inches! ” he exclaimed. “ What a 
whopper! ” 


200 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


201 


“ Yes,” grinned the Eskimo, well pleased with 
Byron’s delighted surprise. 

When the skin had been deposited near one of 
the lamps, Byron at once brought up the question 
of securing the services of the pair on the pro¬ 
posed walrus hunt. 

“ Yes, yes, I like to hunt walrus,” smiled the 
Eskimo. “ No, no, I am not afraid of Old Saber- 
Tusk. He is, after all, only a walrus. Besides, 
is not Teragloona a brave hunter? Are not all 
his men brave? And most of all, are not you, 
the Alongmeet (white man), more brave than any 
other? Did you not harpoon that great bear 
when you had no rifle to shoot? Yes, I will go. 
Only — but,” his face clouded, “ I cannot go 
from the Eskimo village! ” 

The boy looked eager. 

“ Oh, that’s all right,” smiled Byron. “ We’re 
not leaving from the village. Teragloona and 
his men are to bring the skin-boat to the edge of 
the shore ice before our cabin. We will put 
aboard our food and hunting traps there, and 
there you may join us, if you will, you and the 
girl. But then,” he said, after a moment’s 


202 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

thought, “perhaps we ought not to ask the girl 
to go. It may be too dangerous for her.” 

The Eskimo apparently repeated Byron’s 
speech to the girl. After listening intently, her 
face clouded, then, like a sudden burst of rain, 
her words came thick and fast. 

The Eskimo heard her through, then with a 
smile on his lips said: “ She say, that one, i Eski¬ 
mo woman always go where Eskimo man go. 
Eskimo man afraid? Afraid, too, that Eskimo 
woman. Eskimo man not afraid? Not afraid, 
that Eskimo woman.’ She say that one girl, 
‘ Wan’a go.’ Better go, think mine.” 

This seemed satisfactory. 

“ All right, if that’s the way it is, I think so, 
too,” laughed Byron as he drew on his coat pre¬ 
paratory to departure. 

It was agreed that when the appointed hour of 
the hunt should be approaching, Byron should 
hasten down the beach and inform these, his new¬ 
found friends, of the fact, and that they should 
hold themselves ready at any moment after the 
break-up of the ice to join in a hasty departure. 

With these matters all arranged, he bowed 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 203 

Iiimself out of the den, and was soon on his way 
home. 

* * * # * * 

When Jerry found himself on the other side 
of the wide gap of water, safely out of reach of 
the old witch-doctor, he granted himself the boon 
of a good, hearty laugh. 

Part of his merriment was caused by recollec¬ 
tion of the way in which he had exposed the fake 
before his admiring followers, and part by the 
wild gymnastics and howling indulged in when 
he realized that the boy had escaped his clutches. 

When at last the doctor gave up in despair and 
departed for his village, Jerry found himself 
confronted by a problem that was no laughing 
matter. How was he to recross that ominous 
stretch of black water? 

He had leaped across it once, it was true. But 
that had been in the heat of flight, with fear 
gripping his heart. Could he now, in the cool 
calm of ordinary circumstance, repeat the feat? 

It is a well-known fact that in time of great 
stress men are endowed with what appears to be 
superhuman strength. In time of disastrous fire, 


204 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

a frail woman carries weights which she cannot 
afterwards lift. In time of flood, when someone 
is drowning, a man launches a boat which, in 
calmer times, he is unable to move. So it had 
been with Jerry. He had achieved the impossible. 
He had leaped that chasm but could not do it 
again. Once, twice, three times, he made a run¬ 
ning start for the leap. Each time, at the brink, 
he halted. It was no use. That he would land 
in the water he could not for a moment question. 

“ Oh, well,” he decided, “ there must be some 
other way.” 

But what? The floe was drifting. These 
floes always are. It might be carrying him far¬ 
ther out to sea, for all he knew. 

In his agitation he began making his way along 
the edge of the water. Imagine then his delight 
when, upon rounding a huge pile of ice, he dis¬ 
covered an Eskimo kiak drawn up on a broad 
ice-pan on his side of the water. 

“ Never rode in one, but Til try anything 
once,” he told himself as he lifted the paddle 
from the kiak and prepared to push it into the 
water. 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


205 


Just there he was brought up with a start. 
This kiak might have been lost by some native. 
In that case he had a perfect right to take it. 
That it had been lost, however, seemed highly 
improbable. The truth more than likely was that 
some ambitious hunter was at this moment out 
there on the ice floes hunting polar bears in the 
moonlight. If that were true, and if Jerry took 
the kiak to the other edge of the water and left 
it there, the man would have no means of escap¬ 
ing from the floe; the floe might drift with him 
out to sea and his life be lost. 

“ In that case, I would be his murderer/ ’ Jerry 
told himself, ‘*which I don’t mean to be. 

44 Oh, well! ” he sighed, “ I suppose there’s 
nothing to do but wait for him, then ask him to 
ferry me across.” 

He sat down very unwillingly to wait. But 
waiting was not his long suit. Soon he grew 
restless. 

“I’ll just look this craft through and see what 
he left behind,” he told himself. “ Here’s a coil 
of walrus-hide rope. And here are some bits of 
driftwood. There’s a tin basin or two and a little 


206 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

can of tea. Driftwood, pans, tea; that means a 
little lunch when fresh meat has been captured. 
Wouldn’t mind some myself. I’m hungry enough 
to eat it raw! ” 

“ But say! ” he exclaimed suddenly. “ Raw- 
hide rope, knife, driftwood for stakes. Wonder 
if it would work. Can’t do worse than try.” 

Taking his long knife from his belt, he began 
hacking a hole in the ice some ten feet from the 
edge of the water. When this hole was as deep 
as his knife-blade would allow him to cut it, he 
made another some six inches from it. Into each 
of these he thrust a stout, round piece of drift¬ 
wood. Then, with one of the pans, he brought 
water and poured it around the sticks. 

He next held the stakes in such a position as 
left them slanting away from the black belt of 
water. When the water in the holes had frozen 
the stakes solidly to the ice, he rose, thrashed his 
arms about to warm them, then uncoiled the raw- 
hide rope. One end of this he fastened to the 
kiak, the other he passed around the two stakes, 
then threw the coil in the kiak. 

After chipping off the ice by the water in such 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


207 


a manner as to make a slanting surface, lie pushed 
the kiak into the water, eased himself gingerly 
into the uncertain seat, then paddled carefully 
away. 

Arrived at the other shore, he disembarked, 
then gave his attention to the rawhide rope. It 
now lay in two strands across the water, still 
looped over the stakes. One end was fastened to 
the kiak; the other was in his hands. 

“ Now if the stakes hold, I’ll make it,” he told 
himself. 

Shoving the kiak off, he began pulling at the 
loose end of the rope. The rope, sliding freely 
over the stakes, gave the kiak a pull and she went 
gliding gracefully toward the other side. 

It took a little care to get her started safely 
up the slanting ice, but at last it was managed, 
and the boy had the pleasure of seeing the kiak 
glide to a safe position on the opposite shore. 

“ There,” he breathed, “ I may now go home 
with quite a clear conscience. I have crossed the 
stream and have wronged no man.” 

At that he took up a steady tramp which in less 
than an hour brought him once more to the door 
of his cabin. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


ben Arnold’s story 

The next day Jerry was sitting alone by the 
fire. Byron and the major had gone up to have 
a look at the location of the tin mine. He was in 
a mixed humor, was Jerry. One moment he was 
chuckling over the exploits of the night before, 
and the next he was bothering his head over the 
possibility that the old witch-doctor had recog¬ 
nized him and would at some uncertain hour 
wreak no uncertain vengeance upon him. 

He was low in the depths of this latter type 
of meditation, when there came a loud thump at 
the door. 

So realistic had been the pictures conjured up 
by his brain, that at the sound of someone knock¬ 
ing he leaped to his feet and sprang for the rifles 
in the comer. 

“ Rot! ” he mumbled a second later. “ It 


208 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


209 


couldn’t be him. He wouldn’t come right out 
bold like that. It’s not the native way.” 

Nevertheless, as he shouted, “ Come in,” he 
remained in a position which left him within 
easy reach of the weapons. 

It was not the witch-doctor, who, pushing back 
his parka hood as he came, stepped through the 
door and closed it behind him, though Jerry could 
have been scarcely less surprised had it been. It 
was Ben Arnold. 

At sight of him, Jerry sprang forward to greet 
him, helped him off with his parka, then found 
him a place by the fire as he said cheerfully: 

“ Cup of coffee? ” 

“ Don’t mind. In the North its always ac¬ 
ceptable,” mumbled the miner. 

He said not another word for some time. He 
sat rubbing his hands by the fire until the coffee 
was ready, then, when he had gulped down a full 
cup, steaming hot, and reached out a hand for 
another, he said suddenly, “ Suppose you don’t 
know who the man was that built this here cabin.” 

“ Jaggers,” said Jerry. 

“ You don’t know who Jaggers was,” contin- 


210 The Boys ’ Big Game Series 

ned the miner, as if determined to make at least 
one statement that might not be contradicted. 

“ No one knows much about him, I guess,’’ 
smiled Jerry. “Rum old fellow, I guess; that’s 
about all.” 

“No, that’s not all,” exulted the miner, rub¬ 
bing his rough hands together until the sound 
was like the grating of a nutmeg. “ That’s not 
all; not near all. This Jaggers,” his voice dropped 
to a whisper, “ he was my dead partner’s grand¬ 
father, that’s what he was.” 

Lifting his head, he stared, with eyes half 
closed, at the boy, as if expecting an exclamation 
of surprise. 

Jerry was surprised and showed it. 

< < Why — I — I thought nothing was known of 
his relatives? ” 

“ That’s what they all think,” said Arnold, 
twisting his mouth into an expression intended to 
denote great knowledge and secrecy. “ That’s 
what they all think. But thinkin’ don’t never do 
nobody much good. It’s knowin’ that counts. 
And I know.” 

Seizing u poker, he jabbed the fire so viciously, 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 211 

and with such good effect, that his dark face was 
lighted up as a smelter’s by the forge. 

“ Jaggers was Lloyd Love joy’s grandfather,” 
he went on. ‘‘ That’s how Lovejoy came North— 
came to find the gold.” 

“ The gold? ” 

“ Exactly. Jaggers’ pot of gold, ’er sack of 
gold, kettle, or whatever he kept it in.” 

‘ 6 Did he find it? ” 

“ He did not. Found his grave down at 
Nome. Tha’t what he did.” 

Arnold was staring at the dust-blackened cari¬ 
bou skull in the peak of the wall. Jerry would 
have sworn that he saw something there that in¬ 
terested him greatly. His gaze shifted swiftly to 
the fire as Arnold asked suddenly, “ Ever hear 
how Lovejoy died? ” 

“ No.” 

66 Want to? ” 

“ I’d be interested, very much so.” 

“ Well, Lovejoy and me was partners. That 
means we worked together and didn’t scrap. You 
can leave it right there. Some partners I’ve seen 
up here are pals, take to one another like man 


212 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

and wife — like some men and wives, I mean. 
Lovejoy and me wasn’t like that. We was part¬ 
ners an’ square with each other. That’s all. Two 
men mine better together, one on top, one down 
below. Besides, it’s safer. That is how we be¬ 
came partners. I knew he was square, and I 
knew I was, so we hitched. 

“ We’d been doin’ assessment work on some 
claims up at the head of Tissue River when Love- 
joy took the fever. I took care of him best I 
could, till I see it was a case for a doctor. Near¬ 
est doctor was a hundred miles away. 

“ ’Twasn’t much I did for him.” He turned 
and spat thoughtfully at the fire. “ I’d have 
done as much almost for a good dog. I don’t 
take no credit. Tissue River, though, is a place 
that ain’t like no other I’ve heard of. The devils 
of a cold hell lived up at the head of Tissue River, 
and they blow such blasts and blizzards down 
it as you never heard about, except in books, 
maybe. 

“ Well, I got him into a sleeping-bag and rolled 
him in our blankets. Then I tied him on our 
sled, and started out — hundred miles, trail not 


The Sdber-Tuslc Walrus 213 

marked at all and a blizzard blowin’ down from 
that cold hell of Tissue River. 

“ Only had two dogs, so I had to take a hand 
with pullin’ myself. Ever been in a blizzard — a 
regular Arctic one f 

“ Of course not,” he said, answering his own 
question, “ You’re a chechauker. 

“It’s like this.” He rose, and bending far 
forward, as if bracing himself against a storm, 
continued, “ You fight it like you might a net 
that’s been thrown against you to drag you down. 
You leap into it, you scrooch down and dodge 
under it; you stand up and battle it, as you would 
a human foe. Your dogs strike ice; you strike 
ice; your sled strikes ice. The wind picks you 
up and hurls you across it, and your dogs and 
sleds across it, as if they was so much dry grass. 
You land all in a heap. You pick yourself up. 
You find footing and fight some more. 

“ But then,” he said suddenly, dropping into 
his chair, “ what’s the use? You couldn’t un¬ 
derstand. Nobody could that ain’t been through 
that breath of cold hell on Tissue River.” 

He sat staring moodily at the fire for a time, 


214 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

then said quietly: “ I got to Nome with him 
and the sled and one dog; left one on the trail. 
Froze. Hated to. He’d been with me for three 
years, that dog. Had to do it. Got Lovejoy to 
the hospital safe. Not a frostbite. Couldn’t save 
him, though; he died in two weeks. Fever had 
him. 

“ See them! ” He held out two stumps of 
fingers on his right hand. “ Done that on Tissue 
River, pullin’ ag’in’ that cold hell. Gettin’ Love- 
joy to the hospital. That’s why I couldn’t handle 
that crook better the other day. Thought you’d 
like to know.” 

He rose and reached for his parka. “ Better 
be goin’, I guess. Don’t forget, though, that 
Jaggers was Lovejoy’s grandfather, and that if 
he’d found the gold it would have all been his, 
for he told me once he was the only heir. But 
he didn’t so I suppose that’s all there is to that. 

“ One thing more, though,” he spoke through 
his parka, as he dragged it on. “ They’ll tell 
you old Jaggers was a crook, ran away from the 
States and all that. Don’t believe that. Him 
and his missus didn’t hitch, that’s all.” 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


215 


“ If that’s it,” said Jerry, “ perhaps he sent 
her all his gold.” 

“ No, he didn’t. I know that for a fact.” 

“ Hum! ” said Jerry, five minutes after the 
miner had gone, as he sat staring at the fire. 
“ H-m, that’s something else to think about. 
Quite a gob of something, if it’s true. And why 
should he tell it, if it isn’t? ” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE HUNT IS ON 

It was with a strange feeling of uneasiness 
that Jerry left the cabin on the day appointed for 
the beginning of their great quest, the hunt to 
the death for Old Saber-Tusk. “ It’s as if I 
was leaving something back there in the cabin 
that should be guarded / 1 he told himself as he 
glanced back to it, “ some treasure being left 
to the next comer.” 

These thoughts soon left him when he arrived 
at the meeting-place at the edge of the broad 
collar of ice that still clung to the shore. It was 
a strangely mixed group that had gathered there. 
Teragloona and his three Eskimos waited in the 
thirty-five-foot skin-boat which they had patiently 
paddled round the Point. From the den among 
the sand dunes had come hurrying the young 
Eskimo and the girl. From over the dunes 
Charles Markham came swinging his high-power 

216 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


217 


rifle, and, last but not least, the boys and the 
major raced around the ice piles with a dog sled 
piled high with deerskins, food, harpoons and 
whatever else was necessary to a hunt that might 
last for days before they again touched land. 

There was an air of suppressed excitement 
hovering over all as the supplies and equipment 
were put aboard. That it was a really serious 
undertaking they were about to launch upon, and 
one fraught with many dangers, not one of them 
at all doubted. 

“ I think I know how the old Norsemen used 
to feel when they set forth on an expedition in 
a boat no larger than ours,” Byron whispered to 
Jerry as he tossed a bundle of skins into the prow 
of the boat and, giving the Eskimo girl a hand, 
assisted her to a seat on top of them. “ It must 
have been thrilling but there must have been a 
feeling, too, that fate would perhaps not be kind 
enough to allow them all to return in safety.” 

“ It’s just like war and everything else,” 
laughed Jerry. “ You can’t have the thrill with¬ 
out accepting the danger. As for me, give me 
them both.” 


218 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

“ Desra? ” shouted the old headsman, leaping 
to his place in the stern. 

“ Desra, desra, desra,” came from his com¬ 
panions, which meant that all was in readiness 
and that they should push otf. 

As the stretch of black water between them 
and the icy shore-line widened, the dogs left 
behind put their noses in air and let forth a dis¬ 
mal howl. For these, however, the boys experi¬ 
enced no feeling of sympathy, for they knew that 
the wife of their head-man had been engaged to 
remain in the cabin and to see that they were 
properly fed and cared for. 

The great floes of ice had been carried north¬ 
ward by wind and current. Save for the half 
mile of ice still clinging to the shore, and an oc¬ 
casional stray ice-pan here and there, the Straits 
were clear. The black, open water, as yet un¬ 
disturbed by spring storms, was an ideal hunting 
ground. And since the old Eskimo hunter had 
assured them that the big bull walrus would un¬ 
doubtedly be passing in a few hours and that Old 
Saber-Tusk was almost sure to be with that herd, 
excitement ran high from the very start. To the 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


219 


inexperienced boys every dark point of a wavelet 
that broke the water was the black head of a 
walrus. So frequent and persistent were their 
declarations, “ Right over there surely is one,” 
that the head-man at last turned to them with a 
frown to snap out the word: 

“ Desra! ” 

This having been interpreted by the smiling 
major as meaning that he had had quite enough 
of their nonsense, quieted them for some time to 
come. 

For a time they paddled and rowed, the white 
men wielding long, slim oars at the center and 
the Eskimos skillfully swinging short, broad pad¬ 
dles at prow and stern. When they had thus 
partly rounded the Cape, the oars and paddles 
were stored in the bottom of the boat and a mast 
and square sail brought into play. Since the wind 
was now fair and moderately brisk, they shot 
quite rapidly out into the current and were soon 
lost from sight of shore. 

“ Sailing the boundless deep in a skin-boat,” 
murmured young Markham. “ Ive had many a 
thrilling experience but never any such as this. 


220 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

It gives me something of the thrill of the trenches 
in France ,’ 1 he smiled. “ Truly it does.” 

They had gone some eight miles out into the 
open sea. The boys, having at last settled them¬ 
selves down to a long and tedious wait for some¬ 
thing of interest, were watching some little awks, 
the first of the season, as they made their clumsy 
way, half swimming, half flying, toward their 
summer home on the Diomede Islands, when their 
attention was suddenly drawn to the old head¬ 
man, who, shading his eyes, was looking away 
to the north and saying something in tense and 
rapid tones to his Eskimo companions. 

Soon the entire crew were shading their eyes 
and staring away at a spot in the ocean where 
three or four large, flat cakes of drift ice were 
basking in the. sun. 

“ Action! ” Jerry whispered tensely. “ I do 
believe it’s action. See how his muggs, our old 
chief, stares. See how his nose wiggles and his 
feet shuffle. For all the world like an old pointer 
we had once used to act when he had located a 
covey of partridges.” 

It did begin to look as if they were to be fa- 


The Saber‘Tush Walrus 


221 


vored with plenty of excitement from the very 
start, for the boat was turned half about and 
everyone was ordered to his post that he might 
assist the lagging sail with paddle and oar. 

“ Don’t see a thing,” said Byron, twisting his 
head about in an attempt to get a good look at 
the fast approaching ice, “ but then these old 
hunters have eyes such as no white man ever 
dreamed of.” 

Again they paddled on in silence. As they 
neared the spot, the excitement of the two boys 
visibly increased. So great was it in Jerry’s 
case that he for a second forgot his task as oars¬ 
man and, tangling with the major, threw the 
entire crew off the swing. 

“ If that’s the kind of sportsman you are,” 
half grumbled the major, “ we’ll maroon you 
on the next island we come to, with plenty of 
bread and water and a rifle for securing the 
luxuries of life.” 

“ Fine! ” exclaimed Jerry. “ I’d come back 
to civilization in five years with a story to tell 
that would make Robinson Crusoe look a piker.” 

Nevertheless, from that time he tended strictly 


222 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

to business, never so much as glancing over his 
shoulder until he felt the almost unnoticeable jar 
that told him they had come alongside one of the 
ice-pans. 

For a moment the heads of the two chiefs, 
Teragloona and the major, were bent together 
in solemn whispers. When at last the major 
straightened up it was to whisper to his white 
companions: 

“ He says there are three walrus asleep on the 
other edge of this ice-pan. He doesn’t know ex¬ 
actly what kind they are, except that they are 
fairly large fellows. He thinks he had better go 
after them himself, and that the best way to get 
them is to cross the ice afoot, to harpoon them 
and hold them with the lances after they slip 
into the water, until thev can be shot. He is will- 
ing to take two of us with him. Since Markham 
is a better shot than I am, it is a pleasure for 
me to give way to him. One of you boys can go 
with them. I suggest that you cast lots to see 
which it shall be, only don’t be too much disap¬ 
pointed if you don’t draw the lucky number, for 
there will beyond doubt be adventure enough yet 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


223 


for the one who happens to r-emain behind.” 

He smiled as he said it, but had he known the 
true nature of the adventure which awaited them, 
his smile might have vanished. 

“ I have in my hand,” he said, “ two one dol¬ 
lar bills. I do not know what number they have 
on them. I will give you each one of them. The 
one drawing the largest number goes, the other 
stays here. Is that fair? ” 

“ Fair enough,” said the boys in unison. 

“ All right, here they are.” 

The hands of the boys trembled as they took 
the bills. Their breath came quick as they bent 
heads together over them. It was their first great 
hunt and this might be the supreme adventure. 
It was natural enough that each should want to 
be in on it. 

For one moment a tense silence hung over the 
crew and the boat. Then Jerry, looking up with 
an odd smile on his face, announced, “ Byron has 
it. His number is 57396443. Mine is but 
23487757. 

“ A mere difference of some thirty millions,” 
laughed Markham. 


224 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

“ Aw, say! ” exclaimed Byron in a tense whis¬ 
per, “ that’s altogether too bad. Let Jerry go. 
He ’s best with the harpoon. ,, 

But Jerry, being the true sport that he was, 
having played and lost fairly, would not hear of 
it. So, some five minutes later, three figures left 
the boat and, with weapons in hand, went skulk¬ 
ing away across the ice-pan. 

Had those left in the boat been less intent upon 
watching their friends’ departure, they might 
have noticed a large skin-boat off to the right of 
them, which to all appearances was slipping as 
silently upon them as their friends were upon the 
walrus. But, under the circumstances, they did 
not notice, so the boat came on apace, the oars 
dipping silently into the water. 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE BEGINNING OF A STRANGE AND MYSTERIOUS 

COMBAT 

The six-foot-thick cake of ice on which the 
three hunters set forth to stalk their master game 
was a large one. Of a jagged and irregular shape, 
it might have been five hundred rods across it 
in one direction while it was but half the distance 
in another. The distance to be covered by the 
hunters took them from end to end of it and so 
brought them several hundred yards from their 
friends. 

The surface of the ice was very irregular. 
Lying as it had at some ancient time close to some 
shore, it had been drifted over with great heaps 
of snow, which were in places fifteen or twenty 
feet in thickness. Besides this, it had at some 
other time been crowded against other cakes. 
Fragments from some of these had been piled 
upon the edge of it on the side occupied by the 

225 



226 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

walrus, in such a manner that there remained on 
that edge but one small stretch of free, flat ice. 

This space was occupied by the walrus. They 
were therefore to be seen sunning themselves in 
what might have been called a miniature valley 
surrounded on all sides by mountain ranges of ice 
which were of no greater proportions in com¬ 
parison than was the valley. 

“ A wonderful opportunity, ’ 9 whispered 
Charles Markham, as from behind a particularly 
large fragment of broken ice they had their first 
opportunity to observe their sleeping prey. u We 
have only to slip up behind one ice pile and an 
other until we are almost upon them, then make 
a dash for it. They are clumsy beasts; even if 
they awake we can harpoon them long before they 
reach the water. I doubt if even they awaken; 
think we can harpoon them as they sleep.” 

That Teragloona had some thoughts regarding 
the matter, and those rather startling thoughts, 
was shown plainly enough by the expression on 
his face. Had anyone cared to study him at that 
first glimpse of the prey, he might well have 
supposed that he was experiencing the greatest 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


227 


difficulty in refraining from dashing right at 
the beasts without one thought of prowess or 
caution. The look on his face was similar to that 
worn by a movie actor who is supposed to have 
caught sight of the villain who has murdered his 
daughter or betrayed his best friend. The na¬ 
tive’s hands clenched and unclenched. He 
gnashed his teeth in such a manner as to draw 
forth a look of surprise from Markham. At the 
last, however, he conducted himself as any good 
hunter should and agreed readily enough that 
the white hunter’s plan of attack was the proper 
one. 

As for the walrus, they lay piled together like 
so many gigantic pigs, fast asleep and not waking 
any of the time long enough to lift a head and 
look about. So closely were they piled together 
that it was impossible for the inexperienced white 
hunters to tell whether there were three or five 
of them. The Eskimo had said there were three 
and they had taken it for granted that he knew. 

Having made a careful survey of the ground, 
the native plucked nervously at Markham’s arm, 
then beckoning him to follow on, gripped his 


228 The Boys* Big Game Series 

stout harpoon and the stouter rawhide rope, and 
led the way around the ice fragment, thence in a 
circular direction which brought them not a hun¬ 
dred feet from the sleeping beasts. 

“ Feel like St. George tackling the dragon,’’ 
whispered Byron, shivering from head to foot 
with nervous excitement. 

Markham looked at him and smiled. “ I’ve 
heard it said that the bravest hunters were those 
whose teeth chattered before they ventured into 
the lion’s den. So cheer up. You’ll bear yourself 
bravely enough at the end, I am sure.” 

Byron did not hear these last words. He had 
climbed a low pile of ice which left him still hid 
from the walrus by a higher pile, but brought 

him in full view of their boat over on the other 

\ 

edge of the ice. The thing he saw happening 
there filled him with wonder. 

His companions to a man were apparently look¬ 
ing and listening intently for any sight or sound 
of the coming affair with the walrus, while be¬ 
hind them was a second boat, not three lengths 
from them. Standing in the prow of this boat, 
with a long paddle upraised like a lance, was a 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


229 


tall dark native. At that distance it was impos¬ 
sible for the boy to be sure, but it seemed to him 
that it must be the intention of this man, as soon 
as the boats were close enough together, to strike 
his young Eskimo of the den over the head with 
the paddle. What would happen after this, he 
could not guess, nor was there time for him to 
watch the outcome for at that instant the eager 
Teragloona made an impatient gesture and, grip¬ 
ping his harpoon tighter than ever, motioned 
them to join him in the final dash and the attack. 

As they came out into the open where the sleep¬ 
ing beasts were within full view, Byron could see 
at once that there were indeed but three of them. 
The next instant his blood seemed to turn to 
water as his eyes told that while two of these were 
unusually large bull walrus, black and rugged of 
skin, the third one, which lay sprawled somewhat 
apart, was more than twice as large as either of 
his companions and had a skin which resembled 
nothing so much as the black and rocky side of 
a mountain. 

“ Saber-Tusk! ” Byron breathed, with a gasp 
of excitement. 


230 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ As I live! Here’s rare luck,” liis companion 
answered back. 

As for Teragloona, be cast back a dark scowl 
at them, then with the softness and agility of a 
oat, sprang full at the massive sleeping giant of 
the Arctic, Old Saber-Tusk. 

It would not be fair to keep you longer in sus¬ 
pense in regard to what was happening over 
at the boat. Things of some moment were coming 
off there. 

The man who rode in the prow of the strange 
boat was none other than old Ne-pos-ok, the witch¬ 
doctor, whose well-laid plans Jerry had so clev¬ 
erly upset with his fire extinguisher. If he 
recognized the boy at the moment when he and 
his ten companions were stealing upon those left 
in the skin-boat, he gave no sign of it. He seemed 
intent upon bringing the career of the young 
native of the den to a swift and speedy end, and 
would have succeeded too had not Jerry, at the 
precise moment when he came within easy reach 
of his intended victim, for some unaccountable 
reason glanced about and shouted: 


I 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 231 

‘ ‘ Pirates! ’ ’ then swung his own oar about with 
the speed of the wind to thrust it square into the 
stomach of the astonished doctor, who at once 

J 7 

tumbled backward into his own boat, thereby 
barely escaping an icy plunge into the sea. 

That this was not to be the end of it became 
evident at once, for, in the other boat, ten oars 
and paddles flew into the air, as so many lances 
might in olden days, and it was up to the major’s 
men to fight or make a dash from their boat to 
the ice. To do this, to surrender their boat to 
these mysterious ruffians, was farthest from their 
thoughts. So, accepting the challenge, they 
gripped each an oar or a paddle and a fight began, 
the like of which has seldom been witnessed on 
sea or land. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


HE DRIVES THE HARPOON HOME 

With one master-stroke that carried with it all 
the force of a trained arm and the spirit of a 
fiercely savage heart, Teragloona drove the point 
of his shaft into that mountain of flesh and bone 
and stubborn hide which was Old Saber-Tusk. 
Then, as with one wild roar the monster tumbled 
into the sea, he set his lance solidly into the ice, 
wrapped the skin rope many times about it, and 
called at last for the assistance of his comrades in 
resisting the first rude shock which must come 
when the monster reached the end of his tether. 

“ Will it hold? Will it? r9 breathed Byron as 
he set every muscle tense to tug at the lance. 

That was the question uppermost in each man’s 
mind. There was not long to wait. Came such 
a wrench as threatened to tear the lance from its 
moorings, to bend or break its steel point or to 
snap the rawhide rope. For one wild moment 

232 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


233 


with bated breaths the three held their ground. 
Then, when the force appeared to slacken, the 
Eskimo, smiling a savage smile, nodded to Mark¬ 
ham and his rifle. 

“ Come up soon,” he grunted. ‘‘ You ready.” 

The thought that Markham was to have the 
first, perhaps the killing shot, at the monarch of 
the ocean, sent a pang of envy through Byron’s 
being. It lasted but a moment and need not have 
come at all, for this beast who had defied the 
wariest of hunters for half a generation was not 
to be killed by a single shot from the white man’s 
rifle. 

The time came when he tore up the waters 
with one wild rush for air. At that same instant 
the rifle cracked, not once but twice. Whether 
either shot registered a hit would be hard to tell. 
That they had no effect whatever upon the 
strength and rage of the beast was testified to by 
the redoubled strain put upon the lance and rope 
as once more he strained savagely upon the bonds 
that held him prisoner. 

Three times he rose. Three times the high- 
power rifle barked its challenge. There was blood 


234 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

upon the water, but that was all. With strength 
not at all lessened, with temper twice strength¬ 
ened, the beast sawed savagely at his bonds. 

Then there came a time when he rose and no 
rifle shot greeted him. Throwing back his lever 
in amazement, the young hunter looked cha¬ 
grined. By some oversight, he had put but five 
cartridges in his rifle. He had no others in his 
pockets and the balance of his ammunition was 
in the boat. Hastily leaping upon an upended 
ice cake, he looked away toward the boat, as if 
to shout to some one to bring him the needed 
cartridges. The next moment found him staring 
in amazement. The boat was gone. 

“ Gone as if the ocean had swallowed her up,” 
he muttered as he leaped back to the level ice. 

There was still hope. Both Byron and Tera- 
gloona had rifles. While these were of less 
power than was Markham’s, there was a chance 
that they might do in the beast which seemed 
possessed of more than earthly life and power. 

Motioning Markham to take his place at the 
lance, the Eskimo seized his own rifle and, walk¬ 
ing steadily to the very edge of the water, stood 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 


235 


there silent as a statue. Only the working of 
his lips told that he was under great emotional 
strain. 

Again Byron braced himself for the strain upon 
the rawhide rope. To his great astonishment, 
this time it did not come. Seconds passed but no 
terrific tug told them that the beast had again 
made a try at escape. 

“ What can have happened? ” breathed Byron. 
“ Is he dead? ” 

“ May be. May be loose and gone,” came in 
a hoarse whisper from Markham. 

The very thought of such a catastrophe caused 
Byron’s brain to reel. He fancied, as he watched 
the aged native, that if this terrible thing were 
to happen Teragloona would pitch himself madly 
into the sea. 

The answer to this question, however, was not 
far to seek, for there came a boiling of water, 
mixed with blood, close to the edge of the ice. 
The next instant the black form of the walrus 
shot out of the water. Not five feet from the 
Eskimo hunter, he uttered a savage! “Ark 
Ark! ” as he lunged forward. 


236 The Boys 9 Big Game Series 

For one tense second Byron thought the Eskimo 
was lost. So close did the walrus come to drag¬ 
ging him into the water that he left a mark on 
the hard sole of his muckluck and tore a fragment 
of ice from beneath his very feet as he sank back 
into the water. 

As for Teragloona, he was like iron. Not budg¬ 
ing an inch from where he stood, he cooly leveled 
his rifle and fired, threw in a new cartridge and 
fired again. Then, since his rifle was a repeater, 
in his rage at seeing the beast once more making 
a race for life, he lost all control and emptied his 
magazine into the beast as rapidly as he could 
pull the trigger. Then, throwing the smoking 
rifle from him, he gripped the handle of his knife 
and seemed about to throw himself into the foam¬ 
ing water to kill or be killed by the beast that 
had drowned his only son. 

Reading this wild intention in his eyes and 
knowing he could not swim, Byron left his post, 
seized him by the arm and fairly hurled him 
toward the lance. Then seizing his own rifle he 
stood ready to make his shots, the last they pos¬ 
sessed, do their very most at winning the battle 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 237 

they had fought so bravely, yet with so little 
success. 

“ Now! ” he breathed, as he saw a foaming in 
the waters and knew that the enraged beast was 
returning for a second attack. 

Suddenly remembering a little trick he had 
practiced when he felt himself growing excited 
after hooking a tine salmon in the Columbia River, 
he began to whistle. The soothing influence of 
this carefree habit was amazing. He found his 
muscles growing steady and his mind seemed to 
clear at the same time. 

“ Don’t fire until you see the whites of their 
eyes.” He got that sentence from history, but it 
stood him in good stead now. He did not fire at 
once, but waiting until the beast had made his 
lunge and had scraped the ice with his massive 
tusks, he at last saw the red gleam of an eye and, 
at that instant, fired straight at the eye. 

# * * # =#> * 

It was a strange and weird battle that was go¬ 
ing on at the other side of the ice-pan. The in¬ 
stant after Jerry had surprised the crafty witch- 


238 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

doctor and had poked him in the stomach with 
his oar, oars and paddles flashed and flew in every 
direction. 

Outnumbered two to one, the major and his 
little party fought valiantly. Now a side stroke 
sent the young Eskimo reeling to the bottom of 
the boat. But the Eskimo girl, quite as brave as 
any, seized his paddle and dealt the offender such 
a blow as shook the weapon from his hand and 
sent it flying into the black waters. Now Jerry 
warded off a blow; then using his oar as a lance, 
jabbed so fiercely at his assailant as he rose 
for a better thrust that he was pitched head¬ 
foremost into the sea and saved himself from 
drowning only by clinging to the side of the boat 
until his cries attracted the attention of a com¬ 
rade and he was hauled dripping in. 

There were rifles in each boat. Jerry shivered 
at the thought. Should a rifle be touched, the 
affair might end in great carnage. But the at¬ 
tacking party, no doubt knowing well enough the 
terrific cost of murdering a white man, and ap¬ 
parently being intent upon but one thing, the re¬ 
moving of that young Eskimo of the den from 


The Saber-Tusk Walrus 239 

the boat, held to their paddles and oars as wea¬ 
pons. 

With these they might have won too, for as 
the battle raged, the little company of fighters, 
thrust on this side and thwacked on that, grew 
dizzy and weary. Their strokes grew less and 
less effective. It was an unfair attack; two to 
one was too great odds. Jerry in his inmost soul 
resented it. He struggled, even as he fought, for 
some means of defeating them without resorting 
to more terrible violence, which meant rifles and 
death for some. 

Glancing up, he suddenly became conscious of 
the fact that a heavy fog had suddenly descended 
upon them and that they had been carried in the 
fight so far from the ice that it was no longer 
visible. 

“ Byron, Markham, Teragloona! ” he ex¬ 
claimed all in a breath. 4 4 They are on that cake 
of ice, without food or blankets. If we drift 
much farther from them we will be out of haling 
distance and they will be lost, lost forever, to 
starve and freeze on a drifting cake of ice. 
Something must be done at once.” 


240 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

Just then the something that might now be 
done burst upon his consciousness. 

“ The knife! ” he breathed. “ The gambler’s 
knife! It is still at my belt.” 

At that he dropped his oar and flung himself 
in the bottom of the boat, for all the world as if 
he had been dealt a blow that had knocked the 
last flash of consciousness out of him. 

He did not remain quiet there for an instant, 
but having dragged the knife from his belt, crept 
stealthily up the side of the boat until his head 
was just over the rail. Twice he was seen and 
barely dodged a terrific blow from a short paddle. 
The major silenced this combatant with a swift 
thrust to the side. Again Jerry came up. This 
time he flashed the knife across the narrow space 
which lay between the boats and slashed the skin 
covering their opponent’s boat a full eighteen 
inches, up and down. Half the slash being be¬ 
neath the water, floods began at once to pour into 
the enemies’ boat. 

Leaping to his feet Jerry shouted, “ Push away. 
All hands push away! ” 

Then thrusting his own oar firmly against the 


The Saber-Tiusk Walrus 


241 


side of the other boat, he give her such a shove 
as swung her half about. Other oars flashed and 
in less than ten seconds they saw the fog close 
about the foundering boat. 

Wild cries of panic struck their ears. 

“I hope she don’t sink,” said Jerry wrinkling 
his brow. 

“ Never worry,” smiled the major. “ Such an 
accident often occurs when they are hunting wal¬ 
rus. They are prepared for it. A sealskin spread 
over the hole from the outside will stop the flow 
until they can patch it. That was a clever trick. 
We are safe enough now. They’ll never find us 
in this fog.” 

“ If only we had had a single chance,” groaned 
Jerry, whose Irish love of a fight was all but ir¬ 
resistible, “ I would never have done it. We’d 
have beaten them to a frazzle.” 

“ But what in the world did they want? ” 
asked the still amazed major. 

“ Ask him,” whispered Jerry, “ but don’t 
speak above a whisper, and tell the other natives 
to paddle silently away. We don’t want them 
catching up with us after their boat is fixed.” 


242 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

“ Indeed we don’t,” the major whispered back. 
“ We’ve all had quite enough.” 

Jerry had pointed to the young Eskimo from 
the den who at this moment sat nursing a bruise 
on his cheek bone. Having made his way to his 
side, the major whispered: “ What did they 
want? ” 

“ Want me,” grinned the Eskimo. “ Ne-pos- 
ok, one witch-doctor, wan’a keel me.” 

u Why? ” 

“ Ne-pos-ok crook, bad man. One time all Es- 

- 

kimo come together. Many Eskimo wan’a make 
speech; talk much. Wan’a speak mine. Speak 
mine, ‘ Ne-pos-ok bad man, crooked man, cheat 
man.’ Say mine, * Ne-pos-ok cheat Eskimo, keel 
babies, no good Ne-pos-ok.’ ” 

“ What did Ne-pos-ok say then? ” 

“ Say wan’a keel me. Run away, mine. Fol¬ 
low me, that one witch doctor. To-day wan’a 
keel.” 

“ Good for you! ” exclaimed Jerry who had 
heard the conversation. ‘‘ Just for that, if we 
had half a chance, we’d go back and beat them 
up some more. 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


243 


“ But no,” he cried in consternation upon sud¬ 
den thought, “ Our first duty is to our comrades 
marooned on that ice-pan. Somehow we must 
find them.” 


i 


CHAPTER XXVII 


A BULL’S-EYE 

And what of those three friends on the ice-pan? 
How had the battle gone with them? Well 
enough, I assure you. The skull of a bull walrus 
is as impregnable as a cobble stone but for tw'o 
small spots. These spots are located back of his 
eye-balls. A shot taking effect there goes directly 
to his brain and kills instantly. Old Saber-Tusk 
was no different from any other walrus in this 
regard. Byron’s cool head had enabled him to 
make a bull’s-eye on that glaring red eye of the 
walrus. He had fired but this one shot when, to 
his utter amazement, he heard the great beast 
utter a death roar and saw him turn upside down 
in the water. 

“ Dead! ” he muttered, scarcely able to believe 
his eyes. 

‘ i Dead! ” echoed Markham. 

“ Muckie! 99 (Dead) repeated the Eskimo, who 

244 


The Saber-Tush Walrus 


245 


at once dropped upon his knees in a prayer of 
thanksgiving. 

Our story is now soon concluded. Some few 
matters of interest, however, still remain. The 
major and his party had no trouble at all in lo¬ 
cating their friends on the ice-pan. As abruptly 
as it had come, the fog lifted and showed them the 
ice-pan, with the triumphant hunters upon it, in 
full view. 

Old Saber-Tusk proved to be a huge walrus, 
the like of which has never been seen on those 
shores, either before or since. As for his saber¬ 
like tusk, it proved to be a tusk that had been 
splintered endwise, probably at very early age, 
and which had in some manner been sharpened 
almost to a keen knife’s edge. Since the walrus 
was very old, his tusks were exceedingly hard 
and it is not to be doubted that he had done 
deadly execution at times with this tusk. That 
he was a man-eater is to be doubted. 

The major insisted that, since he had been the 
real slayer, Byron should become the possessor 
of that matchless skull and pair of tusks. This 
honor Byron refused to accept, saying that his 


246 The Boys’ Big Game Series 

polar bear skin was trophy enough. So in the 
end the walrus treasures went to the major, and 
they decorate his fireplace to this day. 

On the return journey to the cabin, Markham 
turned suddenly and said, “ You might be inter¬ 
ested to know that my task of examining the tin 
mine is at an end and that it has proved of little 
consequence .’ 1 

“ Is that possible? ” said the major with a 
sinking heart. 

“ We will offer five thousand dollars for it,” 
said Markham. “ At that it is little more than 
a wild speculation.” 

“ So,” said the major thoughtfully, ‘‘ Ben Ar¬ 
nold is an honest man.” 

“ Honest as the day is long, but unfortunate in 
his ventures.” 

That left the major in rather a sober mood. It 
was true that they had succeeded in their hunt 
for the master game. But his great mission after 
all had been to secure a fortune for his well-loved 
friend, the widow and her children. Once they 
were at the cabin, however, a letter which had 
been left him by the first steamer of the season, 


The Sober-Tusk Walrus 


247 


appeared to cheer him up tremendously. Indeed, 
around the festive board which was set in the 
honor of the slaying of Old Saber-Tusk, he was 
the jolliest of the jolly. 

They were all seated about a roaring fire after 
the feast, when Jerry suddenly started up and 
exclaimed: “ The major has his walrus head and 
Byron his polar bear skin to take home. As for 
me, I will not be outdone, I shall take home the 
caribou antlers that have watched this cabin for 
half a century.” 

“ That’s right! ” exclaimed Markham. “ Climb 
up on my shoulders and take them down.” 

No sooner said than done. Jerry was soon 
pulling away at the rawhide rope by which the 
head hung suspended. 

4 4 Gee whillikens! 99 he exclaimed. “ How 
heavy it is. Why, I’m— ” 

His sentence was not finished, for at that in¬ 
stant the thing escaped from his grasp and went 
crashing to the floor. The crash of it was so 
great that the very rafters rattled. To their im¬ 
mense astonishment, there came the merry jingle 
of metal and the next instant the whole floor was 


248 


The Boys’ Big Game Series 

alive with yellow disks which rolled in every di- 
rection as if seeking a way of escape. 

“ Gold! ” exclaimed Jerry, tumbling from the 
hack of his friend. 44 Old Jaggers’ gold! We 
have discovered its hiding-place. His bank was 
the caribou’s skull! ” 

And so they had. Besides the gold there was 
a roll of bank notes of considerable value. When 
they had run down the last fleet coin and had 
stacked them all in neat piles beside the bank 
notes they footed it all up and found it to be 
something less than ten thousand dollars. 

“ So,” said Jerry, smiling happily, “ your 
widow has a legacy after all. The only differ¬ 
ence is it comes not from her former husband but 
from his grandfather, Old Jaggers.” 

“ Quite right,” agreed the major. “ First of 
all, however, the expenses of this expedition must 
come out of this pile of gold. That is no more 
than right.” 

This suggestion was met with stormy protest 
from the two boys but the major silenced their 
objections by showing them the letter which had 
put him in such a jolly humor. It was a letter 



The Saber-Tush Walrus 


249 


assuring him that the fair widow had at last 
decided to accept his hand as suitor in her second 
matrimonial venture. 

4 4 That means,’ ’ he smiled, 4 4 that in the future, 
what’s hers is mine and what’s mine is hers. 
Therefore I insist on paying the expenses of this 
expedition. I realize that you boys have ample 
funds to pay your own share, but my wish is that 
you keep that in store for some future adven¬ 
ture. My theory is that young fellows need 
money for two things and for nothing more: for 
education and for an occasional adventure.” 

With these words the matter was closed. After 
a toast to the major’s future happiness as a man 
of family had been drunk in pantomime the party 
broke up. 

A few days later the major and his boy pals 
took boat for Seattle and ten days later the boys 
were privileged to relate their adventures to their 
parents, who were glad enough to have them safe 
home ae;iain. 

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